I’m half way through Anthony De Mello’s “Enlightenment” and realised I had missed something quite fundamental out of my ramblings on his “Rediscovering Life”.
I got my first taste of this point nearly 30 years ago. I’ve kind of always understood it but never actively applied it. That’s the kind of big idiot I’ve been.
Three decades ago I was sitting on a ferry as it pitched and rolled across the English Channel from Portsmouth the Cherbourg. The windows only revealed the black darkness of night through the rain that streamed across the glass.
I was a 15 year old sitting with a good school friend and my brother, on our way to link up with his German pen pal and cycle around Britanny. Being hard up students we weren’t able to afford cabins with beds but had shelled out a little extra to at least have seats while those more hardcore slept on the floors.
As luck (I thought) would have it our seats were round a table. Others were in cinema style rows of a much less sociable nature so we were kind of at the lux end of our choice.
My friend was suffering the tail end of some summer ‘flu which meant he was working his way through a constant stream of tissues. After he finished each tissue he placed it on the table where it rocked in harmony with the ship.
When half a dozen or so bacteria ridden bits of crumpled up soft paper had built up on the table I asked him if he would take them to the bin. To my surprise he said no.
“But they’re disgusting and it really annoys me”, I said.
“Only because you let it” he replied.
My friend was far more into self awareness back then than I thought I would ever need to be. He read Dr Wayne Dyer alongside witchcraft, he explored Buddhism and Hinduism. He read about religions and devil worshiping. I didn’t need to, I told myself, because my emotions were under control. I didn’t need that mumbo-jumbo.
What I didn’t get was much sleep that night, and I sleep easily. The used tissues rolled left and then right, obeying gravity as the ferry tipped this way and that on the waves. When I did drift off and wake up I was kept awake by my annoyance – with them and with him.
It wasn’t because I let myself be annoyed, I kept thinking, its because they are disgusting and so it is annoying. I would gradually come to understand what he meant but it would take nearly three decades for it to fully sink in.
De Mello approaches this same concept in Rediscovering Life.
As a recap the basic principle in Rediscovering Life is that if you stop blocking happiness you can be happy. If you recognise that someone does not upset you, only you upset you, then you don’t need to waste your energy on being upset and can use it for something far more positive like helping them or helping yourself.
That doesn’t mean you don’t care and it doesn’t mean you don’t listen to what they say, it just means you don’t tie your happiness to their words or actions.
If that all sounds like mumbo-jumbo-wizardry of the half crazed sort I don’t blame you – so did I when I first heard it. But it also means you haven’t read my blah on the film Rediscovering Life (or perhaps not watched the film itself).
If you have and you get it, let’s move on.
The person who is doing something that upsets you doesn’t need to stop doing that something, You just stop being upset by it.
Instead of trying to mold the world around you into what you want it to be, you accept it as what it is? Not quite. There is no reason to attempt to change things but your happiness should not be tied to achieving this change.
If you can pull that off the feeling is extraordinary, it really does feel like you are being set free. It can also be a but socially awkward. I’ve found myself smiling recently when someone insulted me – much to their anger. But I wasn’t smiling at them or the insult, I was just immensely pleased to see that I was not upset.
I was listening, I was taking on board what they were saying, but I was not getting upset.
I haven’t had a “De Mello moment” when I said “Aha! – I get it!” I’ve gradually been moving to this point for the last ten years or so. I’ll give you an example.
A decade back if I had been forced by circumstances to move back to my home town it would have been shattering.
I would have seen myself as a total failure. In my teens I was surrounded by friends whose ambitions were to get as far away from the dull small town as possible and I’m guessing my perception of their judgement of me ending up full circle was important back then.
About 5 years back I realised I would be happy to live there. One of my friends had moved back. She had never moved that far away but now she had actually moved back completely and utterly … and I saw her as no worse so why did I think others would think the worse of me?
I had been letting my imagination of what I thought other people would think block off an avenue of possibility. How mad is that?
I mean it is still a desperately dull place. A commuter town for London that has eeked out one decent coffee shop. But a place should not determine your happiness. Happiness should not depend on a town’s ability to entertain you.
No matter where you end up you should be able to be happy while you work to create a change. Being happy does not mean being passive.
Now let’s think about this in the personal realm. I used to work from time to time with someone who appeared to be happy – I’ll come back to that caveat in a moment.
His wild hair and shabby clothes made it hard to determine, from a distance, if he had just tumbled out of bed and was still wearing his pajamas or perhaps if had been using his suit as his pajamas.
His broad smile revealed teeth that looked like they had been taken by surprise and were all jostling to get into line.
His flatulence was hard work on car journeys but he announced each gas expulsion with tremendous pride as a trait that I would only achieve in older life.
His positive attitude was infectious. He was someone you wanted to be around. He did not impress you with his clothing or his efforts towards personal appearance. He had turned an embarrassing bowel problem into a “I’ve got something you don’t have” commodity.
He was everything our society said you shouldn’t be if you wanted to be socially acceptable, and yet he was far more than just socially acceptable – he was socially desirable!
I said earlier he appeared to be happy. I’m not totally convinced he was as he popped nicotine tablets like fresh mints. Perhaps he didn’t realise just how close to happiness he was.
The point, which I’ll finally come to, is this. He didn’t change to fit societies norms, he accepted his deficiencies and didn’t feel the need to change them, or hide them, in order to be happy. He was a wealthy man and the resources to make these changes were well within his means.
A different person in the same circumstances might spend a small fortune on hair treatments, on dentistry, on clothes, on medication and still never be as happy as my colleague was.
If your hair bothers you, stop letting it because it is you who bothers you, not your hair. It is your belief that your hair must be a certain way for others to accept you that bothers you – and not a surprising belief considering how society blasts us daily with this message.
When you accept your hair as it is you can be happy. You hair hasn’t changed you have.
When you accept a person as they are instead of letting them annoy you or upset you it is you who have changed, not them.
This concept is actually something we can witness daily. A born again Christian will suddenly see the world as a wonder of divine creation to be celebrated. Someone who has shaken off religion will be equally relieved and see the world as it is, not through the lens of a story book or a belief system.
For both the world has not changed. Only their perception of it.
Things can remain the same but if you change they can seem a whole lot better.
Dirty tissues can now roll around a ferry table in front of me. They are still the same bacteria laden bits of paper, but they do not have the power to annoy me any more and that is because I changed, not them.