The campground is starting to fill up for the weekend.
After spending the middle of the week in this tent section with just me and my doggie, we got our first weekend camp neighbor, who I’ll call David.
I learned from other campers how to behave in this case: You walk by the newly arrived camper and call out: “Hey neighbor!” This breaks the ice right away and everyone feels friendly and at home. In my first campground after arriving in California, as my sister helped me choose my site and then set up camp, we got a visit from two women in the next RV. They had a bottle of wine for us, and then asked if they could see inside The Tiny.
At the current campground, my new tent neighbors last weekend came up the hill and called out: “Hey neighbor!” They also wanted to see inside The Tiny, and I checked out their Camplet from Denmark.
This morning, as soon as David pulled up and started putting up his tent, I was heading out for a walk with the dog. And I called out: “Hey neighbor.” David noted that I had the best campsite, and he had gotten up early and arrived at the campground the minute they opened to snag my site. He was disappointed to see that it was taken. He asked me when I had arrived. Yesterday? The day before? I told him I’d been here more than a week. And I noticed a strange sensation in myself: I felt a little regret that I had taken this awesome site for so long and denied others its joys.
For me, this line of thinking was a shocking realization. For many years, I’ve been insisting on having the best campsite, the best table in the restaurant, the best seat on the plane. That I could be wanting someone else to have the best instead of me was a shock.
Of course it wasn’t always like this.
You may not know this if you met me today, but I once thought of myself as a complete piece of garbage, worthy of nothing. Today I stand tall with dignity. But early on in life, I somehow got the impression that I was junk, trash, and worthless. Therefore, I always insisted on the worst situation for myself. It just seemed fitting for a piece of nothing like myself. I hit my bottom with this kind of thinking when I was age 24. I weighed 275 lbs. and watched TV all day and night, and my mind was a negative cesspool replaying all the slights and hurts of my life up to that point. Thank goodness I couldn’t take it any more and I decided to try and find out what was wrong with me. I accepted the fact that I was a piece of crap, but I decided to become the best piece of crap I could.
Over the decades of my recovery from my negative thinking, from food addiction, from alcohol and pot addiction, I’ve come realize that I’m OK. Perhaps in reaction to my earlier insistence on the worst life could offer, I started to demand the best. This made it necessary, for instance, to change tables in restaurants when I deemed another table to be superior. That caused distress in more than one of my dining companions.
I started to see another way to behave by observing a friend of mine. I recall us finishing up a meal in New Orleans at a restaurant where there was a long wait. My friend said: “Let’s get out of here so someone else can have our table.” What? Give up a good situation for others? That was shocking to me. That was an expansive way of thinking, to be considering the good of all rather than just my own little self. I recalled a line in A Course in Miracles, the Teacher’s Manual, that said you know you have become a teacher when you do not see someone else’s interest as separate from your own. Or something like that. To see myself as part of a big world where sometimes you get the best table and sometimes someone else does was a revelation.
So when David said he got here early specifically to get my campsite, I really felt for him. I had a moment where I imagined myself trading spaces with him (and his wife and three grandkids who will be arriving soon) for the weekend. After all, I’ll be gone all day tomorrow for social and family events. But, it would be such a massive hassle to pack up and move camp, and the fantasy quickly faded.
Still, the mere fact that I felt that this supreme site should be shared among those I do not know is mind-blowing. I do not regret my earlier years of self hatred. They gave me my story. I do not regret my later years of greediness. They gave me my retribution.
But now, thinking of the well-being of David and his family, as well as my and my doggie’s well-being, I may have found the sacred middle path. I care about me. I care about you. And what do you say we all share the bounty of this good life?