Tales from Juror #41

I was dismissed today after three days of jury selection for a murder trial that was expected to go until the middle of April. I feel like there has been a lot of blog material this week!

I had already been thinking about what I wrote in the last blog about saying what I want and how that is completely unrelated to thinking I should or will get what I want or especially that someone else should do or give me what I want. It is important to recognize my wants because they are part of my real experience as a real human, but not things should be the way I want them. On my way home today, I could really feel all the tension that had been building for me in the last few days and was suddenly aware of how much energy I had been spending on analyzing and trying to determine what I wanted. Part of me wanted to be on that jury as an escape from my regular life and part of me wanted to be on the jury because it would be a fascinating experience and part of me wanted to be dismissed because it would mean I would miss a training that I have been looking forward to for months and part of me wanted to be dismissed because I just wanted to go back to my regular routine.

But this whole thing had absolutely nothing to do with what I wanted. I got summoned and had a responsibility to meet; I took an oath and one of the reasons for dismissal was not “I don’t want to,” so I was just in the process waiting to see what would happen and it completely didn’t matter what I wanted. That is, it didn’t matter in terms of the external goings-on. It was useful and is useful still as I come down from the whole thing to know what is going on inside. There were moments when I considered exaggerating the truth; I spent time “strategizing” ways to appear partial. But because I was aware of my internal processes, I could keep them separate from my duty in the moment and not act on them. This leaves me with a feeling of integrity, which is nice.

Raga is one of the obstacles to happiness. It means desire or attachment. I would say it’s not desire that is the problem exactly. It’s thinking that I can only be happy when my desires are met and chasing after those desires that really causes suffering. It’s possible to want something and enjoy the wanting and even enjoy trying to meet the want without thinking that whether or not I get it means something about me or my life, that things really need to be a certain way or that there should be a certain outcome.

And besides, I would suspect that a lot of the time we actually want multiple, possibly conflicting things anyway, like me and jury duty. When I acknowledge all of my wants in that situation, then whatever happens is okay—part of me is relieved and part of me is disappointed and all of me is okay.