STILL LEARNING

I made a mistake yesterday. I allowed myself to be seduced into a situation that resulted in a continuously ringing telephone. It did not stop ringing yesterday and has continued ringing since early morning today.

It started innocently enough, with a communication (via email? social media? I forget) suggesting that I could easily access information that would allow me to determine if my monthly mortgage payments could be significantly reduced. I took the bait, and clicked. And having taken the first step down this rabbit hole, I found myself venturing further with each click--because now, I would not want to have wasted the already invested time!--until I finally reached the page that wanted me to choose a mortgage company. Where I balked, realizing I'd been tricked into this from the start. I clicked no further.

Since then, of course, every mortgage company in the United States has my email address, my telephone number, and probably every other piece of personal information about me since the date of my birth. And the phone keeps ringing several times an hour.

I ask myself the Buddhist questions. Was it my greed that led me into this commercial trap? It's not exactly greedy, is it, to want to reduce one's monthly mortgage payments? That's common sense, surely, and the Buddha never asked us to sacrifice our common sense. Right Action? It's true that I acted impulsively, without the benefit of mindfulness, without thinking the thing through to its (highly predictable!) consequences. Right Understanding? An imperfect grasp of reality...? True enough.

So I'm left debating these things and noticing, of course, not for the first time and surely not for the last, that my least actions have consequences. I'm left wondering what the wisdom is, in this particular case. I know there's something here that needs to be learned. But... there goes the phone again.