How Pessimism Can Save Your Life

I am a wide-eyed optimist at heart, but from time to time it's important to remind myself that things do not always turn out for the best. Sometimes the worst does happen; we hit the end of the line; the party's over.

My father was an Army man.  He was sent to Vietnam in July 1965.  A couple of years ago I decided to learn more about that part of his life.   Thankfully my mom had saved a cache of old reel-to-reel tapes that they used to send back and forth to each other.  She also had a box of their letters.  As I began sifting through their correspondence and listening to the tapes, an image of my dad began to form - not some romanticised vision of a heroic soldier and his one true love (although their love was overwhelmingly present), but of a man trapped in a situation that he hated and who was tortured by the fear that he may have screwed up his life.

Dad loved his country, its democratic system and the principles for which it stands (once stood?) and he wanted to go to law school to do his part in preserving its greatness.  But, as one particular tape made clear, he was disgusted with the military and it's culture of authority-over-decency.  He abhorred the tendency toward shame and bullying which his superiors made clear was the way to get ahead.  He spoke and wrote of his desire to refuse a Captainship, should it be offered - his way of sticking to his principles. My grandfather said he was "intolerant of injustice and unfairness, but was always tolerant, understanding and forgiving of human weakness."

Oddly, he did not seem at all afraid of being in Vietnam.  As an officer he was stationed in Saigon and worked at the large field depot on the outskirts of the city.  The war was still young, and the city still relatively safe.   What did seem to worry him was that he might have ruined his chances of getting into a good law school by not taking his undergrad years seriously enough; and he couldn't shake the gnawing sense that going into the military was a big mistake.

As it turns out, he was not safe in Saigon.  On the morning of April 1st, 1966, a Viet Cong terrorist drove a van full of explosives into the lobby of the Victoria Hotel where he was billeted.  Captain David Marshall Davies was the only American soldier killed in the blast.  He was a few weeks shy of his 26th birthday. 

Next week I will turn 46 - I'll have had 20 years more than my dad had.  I feel a bit sick when I realize how many aspirations I've filed away for someday.   We like to believe that we will always get another chance to step up in life, but my father's short life is a sobering testament to the fact that that is not always the case. 

Being an optimist is fantastic, but perhaps an equal dose of pessimism is what we all need to keep us moving towards our dreams.  As the say goes, "If not me, who? And if not now, when?"

Not nice...and proud of it!

Someone once asked me how becoming  a Psychosynthesis counselor has changed me.  I hesitated only a moment before answering, "I'm not as nice as I used to be."  But, I hear you thinking, isn't is good to be nice?  In a word, no.  Let me explain.

A few years ago we had a heatwave in London - really hot, almost 100 degrees.  On this particular day I had arrived at class in my trusty VW Beetle with 10 minutes to spare.  I left the engine running so I could enjoy a few minutes gathering my thoughts in the coolness of the air conditioning.  I am not normally the sort to condone such wanton burning of fosil fuels, but following a fraught morning I felt I deserved a moment of cool peace. 

After only a minute or so, a woman walking by rapped on my window.  With a start I snapped to attention and cracked the window to see what she wanted.  With a friendly smile she asked if I wouldn't mind turning my engine off.  I was horrified at having been "caught" in my selfish act, and without hesitating I said, "Of course!" and switched off my car.  As she walked away I felt the red rise in my cheeks and I realized how angry I was.  But I wan't angry with the busy body, I was mad at myself!  My "niceness" had become habitual to the point where I was on people-pleasing autopilot.  

Thus began the process of untangling the difference between nice and kind - two very different things.  After all, giving robust "feedback" (critcism to some) with kindness can be extremely valuable, whereas niceness just for the sake of it evokes images of the smarmy Eddy Haskel on Leave it to Beaver.  (Didn't you just want to punch him?!)

I don't remember where I found the following quote, but I can't resist including it:

"The truth spoken is a gift given. Truth withheld is more than a gift denied, it is an arrow aimed at the heart.

It has been said that "the truth hurts," but the exact opposite is true. No truth is too hurtful, and no lie is harmless. Because every truth opens your heart to another, and every lie separates it.

Yet know this: The way you say your truth can be hurtful.  So speak your truth, but soothe your words with peace."

Many times I have replayed the scene in the car and imagined what I could have said to that lady - something like, "I'm sure you have your reasons for asking me to turn my engine off, but I have good reasons of my own for keeping it running, and it's really none of your business."  (The expression "firm but kind" comes to mind.) 

I'm more honest in my interactions these days, and I have discovered that  I can do all sorts of "not nice" things without a guilt trip, like saying no to my kids, or letting a waiter know the truth when they ask how the food is.  Stepping into my true self may mean that I'm not as nice as I used to be, but, ultimately, I am far kinder, especially to myself. 

 

A Case for Surrender

If you are planning to see A Single Man, the new movie directed by Tom Ford, stop reading now - I don't want to ruin it for you.  It's a beautiful film, brimming with pain and, ultimately, salvation, although not in the way one might think.  I watched last night and it got me thinking about the power of surrender.  In the movie, Colin Firth plays a middle aged, homosexual academic who can not come to terms with the death of his partner of 16 years.  Eight months on, he is meticulously planning his own suicide.  The camera follows Firth through his last day of life, but everything does not go to plan.

And that's life, isn't it - our best laid plans scuppered and interupted in ways both irritating and illuminating:  People die/leave us/change; circumstances fail to meet our expectations.  And in this beautiful mess we have two choices - either hold stubbornly to our pain and disappointment, or surrender to the inevitable ebb and flow of life.  Put another way by Poet Greta W. Croby, "Loss makes artists of us all as we weave new patterns in the fabric of our lives."

Back in 1998 I was floored by the news that I would never be able to have children.  The consensus among the various fertility specialist I saw was that having donor egg IVF was my only viable option.  Furious and refusing to accept their diagnosis, I went into overdrive seeking specialists and techniques that might tip the odds in my favor - Traditional Chinese Medicine, psychotherapy, Reiki healing...you name it, I probably tried it.  After about three years, when I was tired of fighting with God about my predicament, I reached my surrender point.  I quit struggling and decided that with or without a baby I could have, would have, a wonderful life.  Several months later I fell pregnant, naturally, with my son Charlie.

You may argue that it was the all the treatments added up over time that enabled my pregnancy, but with the benefit of hind-sight, I beg to differ.  The inner shift I experienced when I surrendered was measurable -  it was if I removed a dam of resistance and allowed the waters of life to flow freely once more.  And although I never stopped wishing for a baby in my heart of hearts, I quit focusing on what I didn't have, and did a swan dive back into the life I actually had, rather than the one I thought I should have.

Colin Firth does not get the chance to kill himself in A Single Man.  He too awakes from his grief and notices that the world and all its beauty is still there, offering its hand if he will only grasp it.  Quite beautifully and ironically, he dies of a heart attack and is reunited with his lover upon his surrender.

I thought this an inspired way to end the film, which begs the question, what are you resisting in your own life?  Where are you trying to swim against the current?  If you are willing to take the risk and give up the struggle (though not the wish) you might be amazed at where the flow of life might take you.  As counter-intuitive as it seems, surrendering may be the most powerful thing you've ever done.

My Life as an Atom

I recently read Deepak Chopra’s latest book Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul and came away with an unshakeable image of myself as an atom.  Or more precisely, I picture myself as the nucleus of an atom, with all the bits and pieces of my life rotating around me like electrons.  This is not as loony as it sounds.  Apparently those on the leading edge of science view the human body as nothing less than a hologram for the entire universe.  (More on this next week.) So if my body is a hologram of the universe, can’t an atom be a hologram of my life?

Atoms are the smallest basic unit of matter and are like tiny solar systems with a nucleus instead of a central sun.  The nucleus is actually a cluster of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons bound together by an extremely powerful nuclear force.  Around the nucleus, whirling at fantastic speeds, is a cloud of negatively charged electrons held in place by electromagnetic force.  Thus my soul is the nucleus of me, and all the events and circumstances of my life are the electrons

My interpretation of Chopra’s work is that we can choose to view life either from the perspective of the nucleus/soul - allowing life to spin around us trusting that everything is in perfect balance, or we can live from the ego’s perspective  - jumping on any number of negatively charged electrons and getting caught in the cycle of worry and the need to control.  He advocates the former and suggests adopting a type of “soft focus” awareness as the key to achieving it.  An example:

• Your mind is calm and not overworked. You enjoy being in its presence.

• You don’t feel haunted by guilty and shameful thoughts.

• You don’t try to control your thoughts.  The more freely they come, the better.

• When you make a mistake, you accept it and quickly move on.

• Not every idea can be perfect or brilliant, and mistakes are often the best teachers.

• There’s a contrast between good and bad impulses, but you take both in stride.  (In fact, sometimes you take secret delight in so-called bad thoughts, knowing that they’re just another part of your experience.)

• Unpleasant mental images don’t make you afraid or disgusted.  You can adapt to the mind’s darker side.

• You aren’t plagued by a judgmental voice telling you that you’re bad or unworthy.

• You aren’t braced for the next disaster around the corner.

Meditation is one way to cultivate this awareness, as it seems the brain instinctively goes to the default soul/nucleus position when given half a chance.  Personally I don’t often sit still long enough to meditate.  But when I find myself getting swept out into electron territory, it is often enough just to remind myself that life keeps spinning on and on whether I worry about it or not.

The beauty of this philosophy is that we learn to welcome all thoughts, and indeed all of life, with equanimity - no need to condemn negativity as is so popular in some circles.  Besides, with its equal number of protons and neutrons, an atom is inherently neutral (as I believe the soul is) while an atom that is positively or negatively charged is not an atom at all, but an ion, which must go forth and find something to bond with to become balanced.  It is a “quest-ion.” (Get it?)

The ego hates this type of thinking because it thrives on drama – it loves all the to-ing and fro-ing of electrons.  But with the soul in the drivers seat instead of the ego, it’s a much smoother ride in the atom of life.  

***

Excuse me, have you got a moment?

Although I've been life long explorer of human consciousness and spirituality and such, I’ve never really understood what all the fuss is about “being in the moment?”  To me it sounds akin to watching paint dry.  My brain likes action - my inner dialogue jumping furiously between old memories and future possibilities. But having such an active brain means my best-laid plans often get waylaid by “bright shiny thing” syndrome (“Oh look…a bright shiny thing!”) which, while mildly entertaining, is extremely frustrating when you’ve got an infinite list of things to do in a finite amount of time.

So imagine my surprise when one day, just recently, I got it.  I was “inspired” to do the dishes and, as I went through the process, I realized that I was focusing on nothing else but the feeling of the warm soapy water on my hands…and the way I was able to get every bit of crust off the old fying pan…even the smell of the not-so-fresh dish rag.  I was “in the moment” with washing the dishes and it was, dare I say, wonderful.

Being in the moment means being present to the task at hand without my brain racing ahead to the next item on the agenda.  It also means ejecting the stream of “shoulds” and “oughts” that often accompany me through my day.  It really is that simple.  It’s so simple, in fact, that I feel stupid even writing about it!  (She never got that? Duh!!)

There are a bunch of things going on in my life right now that could paralyse me with fear about the future, but when I gently pull my mind back from the edge of the precipice and focus on the task at hand, life just flows.  I’ve been so amazed by this that I was inspired to sit and write this post. And now I am ready to go and “be in the moment” with my pillow.  Good night everyone. 

***

Master Oogway and the Broken Leg of Life

Perhaps you are familiar with the ancient Taoist proverb about the boy who broke his leg?  It goes something like this: 

One day, a farmer's horse ran away. His neighbours cried, "What terrible luck that you lost your horse!" The farmer replied, "Maybe so, maybe not."

A few days later, the horse returned, leading several wild horses. The neighbours cried, "Your horse has returned, and brought more with him. What great fortune!" The farmer replied, "Maybe so, maybe not."

Later that week, the farmer's son was trying to break one of the wild horses and got thrown to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried, "Your son broke his leg, what a calamity!" The farmer replied, "Maybe so, maybe not."

A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, conscripting all the able-bodied young men for the army. They did not take the farmer's son because of his broken leg. Friends cried, "Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!" To which the farmer replied, "Maybe so, maybe not."

Recently, while watching the film KUNG FU PANDA (Dreamworks 2008) with my son, I was delighted when wise old Master Oogway reminds Master Shifu (who is in a panic because the villain Tai Lung has escaped from prison) that ‘an event is just an event.’ In other words, events have no meaning in and of themselves, only the ones we give them.  Though this may have gone over a seven-year-old’s head, it went straight to my heart.

This can be hard for people to grasp as human beings are generally far more comfortable with a firm, clear set of rules and values which name things as “right” and “wrong”,  “good” and “bad” as determined by some authority, earthly or heavenly. But the truth, I suspect, is more aligned with Master Oogway’s philosophy than religious or political dogma. 

Perhaps we know this innately, but we forget in the heat of the moment.  I remember not getting a job I particularly wanted some years ago.  I cursed the unfairness of life.  Soon after I was offered a better, far more interesting position that I could not have taken if I had got the first job.  I could have saved myself a lot of angst if I'd been centered enough to pause and consider that losing out on a job might have a greater meaning.  

We can all cultivate this kind of "maybe so, maybe not" centeredness, and heaven knows there are plenty of wise souls both past and present who offer practical teachings along those lines.  Jesus himself urged us not to judge, and Byron Katie, a favorite modern sage, urges us to “love what is.”

There is plenty going on in the world right now that one could call “good” or “bad.”  But it is perhaps wiser to remember that a broken leg is just a broken leg unless we deem otherwise. 

War within, Peace without? It's not possible.

As the US prepares to send more troops to Afghanistan, I find myself contemplating the meaning of war and wondering if it is an inevitable part of the human condition.  If life consists of a balance of opposite qualities, as I believe it does, then perhaps war is the necessary flip side of peace.  For how would you know peace without war?  (Or good without bad…up without down…happy without sad?)  If you are “for” peace and “against” war, then are you not at war with war?  We are all warmongers and peaceniks in our own ways.

What if, instead, people realized that the world around them is simply a reflection of what's going on inside them?  The result of living a one-sided life – seeking only happiness, prosperity, peace, love, and pleasure – means that the opposites qualities of unhappiness, poverty, war, hate and pain get projected “out there” into the wider world.   They are reflected back to us as a reminder that they are being ignored and need attention.  If, on the other hand, we embrace our own darkness and seek to understand it rather than condemn it, we can harness its wisdom.  In therapy speak this is called “withdrawing projections.”  

Think of these rejected qualities as a frustrated toddler pulling on your coat trying to get your attention - the more they are ignored the louder they get, until you’ve got a full-blown tantrum on your hands. However, give them your full attention and they are appeased.  The same is true of our unwanted emotions – ignore them and they may blow up at the most inopportune moment,  acknowledge them and they deliver their wisdom then dissipate.

We go to great lengths to avoid feeling or expressing unwelcome emotions.  We drink too much, eat too much, watch too much TV, and so forth.  But what if the despair we are keeping at bay is an important message about the state of a marriage?  We practice habitual niceness, but who are we benefiting if we ignore a gnawing sense of dislike (an inner alarm bell about a stranger’s intentions?) by covering it with politeness and a pleasant smile? 

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain the courage to re-baptize our badness as the best in us.”   This indeed takes a brave heart, as resurrecting what we’ve been conditioned to believe is unacceptable can be a very scary and painful process.  But being willing to love our suppressed selves is vital to begin living an authentic life.  It may also be the key to peace on earth. 

Love your WHOLE self and stop the inner war, then perhaps the outer ones can stop too.