Category: life

I’m totally in favor of gun control. After all, who could kill that many children in such a short time without a meticulously-designed, highly-optimized killing instrument? Some cold-hearted engineer put a lot of careful, loving thought into it. Imagine….

But gun control’s not even close to being a solution. What about giving mentally-ill people resources that they can actually use, that their families feel are accessible, that actually have a chance of working?

What about the culture we live in, that’s so safe and secure on the surface that, for kicks, adolescents turn to TV shows about psychopaths dismembering people?

What about this culture in which gain is everything, religion has been mushed down into positive thinking whose only goal is to get what you want, whether or not you need it, without a thought to its value for either the individual or our society?

Why is the competitive spirit prized over humility, compassion and common sense? Who cares if you’re better than someone else at manipulating high-risk stocks, or designing printed circuit boards, or curing disease? What about everybody doing what they love best and are happiest at? Why is that for losers?

We live in a time when we can’t imagine that economic growth will ever stop, even though every other sort of growth reaches its limit and decays? Isn’t there something pathetic about a society in which the most exciting prospect in our brief life is the next iThing?

Do our children know or even care about the meaning and the reality of the word ‘decadence?’ Do they know that progress is always, always temporary and that every one of the world’s greatest empires since the beginning of time has fallen irreparably into decline and fall? Do they know that everything passes, including the dominance of America, of Hollywood, of capitalism and democracy? Have they the slightest notion of how bad things can get, of how bad they are for eighty percent of the world’s population? Might they have willfully ignored that the universe will end and that, far sooner than that, they themselves will end without warning or fanfare?

People kill people most efficiently with assault weapons. It’s not rocket science. If we could harness the total human intelligence that goes into denying this blatant fact, might we not cure cancer or find an end to hunger? Have we ever really tried to imagine our full potential for good?

Good? That old-fashioned crock?

I dare to believe that goodness is not a cliché. I feel it takes daring. I don’t care that it’s not cool, that I’m out on a limb.

What’s wrong with our brains? Where’s our spirit? What happened to poetry, to love and compassion, to curiosity, to the sense of being completely awed by the night sky, by the majesty of human intelligence, by the breathtaking beauty in every child’s wide eyes?

What the fuck is wrong with us?

 

What if you always believed in yourself and your power to do good, if you succeeded at everything and never doubted yourself again, if you dispelled the fear of death in the certainty that your spirit would never die?

Sounds great, right?

Come now, you know there can never be such certainty. You may be a devout believer, but that’s different thing from certainty. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have to believe, would you?

The idea of always-on, positive thinking has timeless appeal. It promises to dispel those inescapable fears that we all share: of meaninglessness, futility, failure and death. Anyone who comes up with answers to those four has stitched together the ultimate sales pitch. That should raise a red flag.

Instead, it sells innumerable self-help books, tapes and lectures. Positive thinking is a thriving business. It’s the virtual snake-oil of the twenty-first century. Of course, to dwell in constant negativity is a bad thing, but the only way to dwell entirely in positivity is through an act of denial that, even if you can manage it, can’t possibly last.

What we need far more urgently than positive thinking is critical thinking. It starts with hesitation — a step back or a deep breath. Instead of just gulping down things that feel good or convenient, question your motives. Once you can do that the sales pitch becomes subject to scrutiny. This doesn’t mean you no longer experience positivity, but that when you do it’s grounded and substantial.

When we experience negativity we want it to go away and never come back. We’re sometimes willing to believe anything in an effort to feel better. In our hearts lurks the unwelcome knowledge that it’s not so simple: that’s the seed of critical thinking. In our gut lurks the urge to shut down the unpleasantness and pretend that everything’s just fine.

Fear is part of our DNA. It’s never pleasant, even when it’s healthy. Facing death doesn’t stop the fear of death. Brushing it under the carpet leaves it free to burrow though our subconscious and wreak havoc, but facing it is sobering. It reminds us to cherish each moment, to make life purposeful. It keeps our priorities realistic. Ultimately, it’s what enables us to love.

Positive thinking presents itself as the modern successor to spirituality, the source of ‘true’ happiness. It looks like it and it sounds like it, but it’s a confidence trick. Instead of taking a little time each day to withdraw from the bustle of life, we’re encouraged to put aside fear and negativity and believe in what we crave most from life. It’s the ultimate consumerism: rather than buying mere stuff that will never make us happy, we’re sold timeless truths that never decay and always satisfy.

The flaw of this approach is that our thoughts are not under our control. They arise in patterns that start to form the moment we open our infant eyes and start making neural connections. We learn to think in much the same way as we learn to walk and talk, through repetition and habit. That’s why thoughts seem to have a mind of their own.

And then there are raw emotions. We all experience them. Unrequited love, the blow of a medical diagnosis and the grief of loss populate all human stories. The feelings they trigger take us over, firmly resisting easy solutions. The momentum of emotional patterns overwhelms even the most convincing logic. Even everyday emotions can take us down. Worry and guilt are rarely reasonable, but we go there routinely — usually against our better judgement.

Critical thinking can’t solve our emotional crises, but it can stop us from compounding our confusion and burying our real feelings by believing in impossible promises. By accepting our negativity and fears we come to terms with them. Believing they can be ‘solved’ is just another form of denial.

So when you hear exactly what you’re hoping to hear, just remember that most things presented to us in these days of mass consumption have been skilfully moulded to our deepest wishes. You’d think with ‘spiritual’ solutions that this would be extremely delicate, subtle stuff, but you’d be wrong. Nothing could be easier.

Beware of anyone with unambiguous answers to those questions that humankind has always found unanswerable. They may be sincere, but that doesn’t make them right.

 

Hi. My name is Stephen and I am a Catholic.

This is not a declaration of faith. More of an opening admission. You know, like an AA meeting.

I was talking to my daughter Melanie on my sixtieth birthday, ruminating on the erratic ups and downs of my life. She made passing mention of me as a Buddhist, which is what most people think I am.

“No,” I said, “I’m not.”

“What are you then?” She challenged, perhaps expecting a nice philosophical diversion.

“I am a Catholic.”

“What,” she exclaimed, “are you taking about?”

I understood her confusion. I’d left the church forty-two years ago. Still, my Catholicism seemed self-evident to me at that moment.

“I don’t mean I’m a card-carrying believer,” I said. “God forbid.”

You’re free to stop believing, but don’t
think for a moment that that’s an out.

“So … what?”

I often tell the story of my old friend Arnie Possick, a young man from an orthodox Jewish family in Brookline Massachusetts. Arnie was ordained into Tibetan Buddhism shortly before me. When we first met he asked about my background and I announced that I was an ex-Catholic.

He looked rueful and said, “If only it were possible to become an ex-Jew.”

I’ve recounted this story to many Jews over the years. All without exception roar with laughter. For them, nothing could be more absurd. You’re free to stop believing, but don’t think for a moment that that’s an out.

On the phone with Melanie that afternoon, taking a sweeping look back over my life, I realized that certain facts were inescapable. Once, I had fervently hoped that by renouncing Catholic doctrine I’d leave behind all it had made of me. As the years passed however, it became evident that I carried around an arsenal of inbred Catholic emotional triggers. There was the instinct to see events gone wrong in terms of blame and punishment; the comfortable ease with which I slipped into neurotic guilt; the awkwardness of being a good boy at heart when I’d have preferred to be bad; above all, there was the unquestioned belief that life should be coherent, explicable and solvable.

These tendencies were too painful for me to face at the time. I wanted out. So, willfully ignoring their subconscious power, I allowed them to guide my exploration into one heretical belief system after another, from Marxism to astrology to Buddhism. On the phone with Melanie, I now understood so clearly the difference between the way that I practiced and thought out my Buddhism, and the way my Asian teachers experienced it.

‘It.’ As if Buddhism were a singular standard! In fact it’s just a label for people who happen to read the same books, more or less. What I have learned from my years is that if anything about life is coherent, it can only be explained by recognizing the compulsions that make us human — in particular our drive to rationalize, and to hope for better.

I am a teacher of personal change. I know you can’t change what you don’t accept. Don’t we all need to understand where we’re coming from, to recognize that our chosen beliefs and forms of expression are superficial, not deep; that underneath all the hope and bluster there is a well-oiled machine of stimulus and response — the animal layer — overlaid by a thicker, more complex but still barely-conscious human layer of rationalized, often absurd, expectations?

Back then I strode confidently into life, as young people are supposed to, without fully acknowledging my expectations. How could I have known them anyway, without hindsight? I had to depend on hope — which is to say the expectations we value most.

What hasn’t changed? I still haven’t quite shaken off the urge for universal answers. As I think about wrapping up this story I’m tempted to say that surely we should all be doing this, that this is what is meant by ‘the examined life,’ that this is what makes us all human.

But I can’t. I’m just too skeptical. Besides, life is mysterious. How could it not be? Our explanations are a knee-jerk reaction to the fear of pointlessness. The need for a point is entirely psychological. It has nothing to do with the world out there — you know, that we used to call God but today call The Universe, as if there’s a difference. I’ve learned that it’s okay if we can’t explain. We’re reminded so often that the freedom to choose is our greatest blessing, but I think not.

What we too easily forget is the freedom to not choose. To allow ourselves, at least occasionally, to stop feeling obliged to explain everything.

We commonly think of insights as flashes of new knowledge or perspective: as a goal.
However, insight can also be something much more creative and proactive: a way of seeing. Considered as something we do rather than something we get, it becomes in-sight, not just the effort to look inwards but to begin every perception from the inside. Instead of reacting helplessly to the stimulus of the world, in continual catch-up mode, insight helps us see the part we play in our perceptions, and our full potential for change in attitude and action.

I was schooled in the fifties and sixties in English private schools. Britain was hanging on grimly to fading memories of martial greatness. Boys were encouraged to be manly, to settle matters of honor discreetly and according to the long-established rules of engagement known as the Marquis of Queensbury Rules.

Translation: our teachers turned a blind eye to schoolyard fighting. If they did witness it, they nodded in approval as they reluctantly separated the aggressors.

Flash forward five decades to our daughter’s high school in small-town Quebec and a fight between two boys that made it to YouTube and national media. A tall teen faces a much shorter one, feints once or twice and begins his attack. His opponent quickly falls to the ground and is pummeled viciously. It ends as the vanquished staggers pathetically into the bushes with a smashed eye socket and broken jaw. Most students are watching, cheering and laughing, or recording it on their phones. A girl calls 911, for which she is later ostracized and bullied.

I first heard about this on the afternoon of the fight, while driving my daughter home from school. The conversation went on all week as the story hit the headlines and some truly half-baked opinions crawled out of the woodwork.

Within a day the victor is expelled. The vanquished returns to school and is treated by the authorities as a victim. Our daughter is scandalized. “It’s ridiculous,” she says. “They both agreed to the fight. They both showed up. They’re equally dumb.”

“You don’t hit a man when he’s down,” I said.

She looked at me blankly.

This is one of those moments when I recognize that that I’ve aged beyond the ken of her generation. I never could recite the Marquis of Queensbury Rules but I knew they were summarized in that simple phrase. If you’re good enough to bring your opponent to his knees, you back off. That’s what makes a man a gentleman.

Unfortunately, the concept of a gentleman – like those of respect, fairness and integrity – is laughably old-fashioned and has no place in today’s sense of honor. If you are fortunate enough to get someone down, you finish him off.

Is this the fault of video games, the psychological result of spending more time in front of little square screens than engaged in life itself? Whatever. It’s a step backward. In the thousands of years of recorded history the instinct for brutality has not diminished. It’s only curtailed by social convention and, if it gets there in time, the law. ‘Civilization’ has made a difference, even though it’s responsible for as much counterfeit morality as real improvements in human life.

We explained to our daughter that being moronic is one thing. Agreeing to fight is another. Engaging in it is yet another. However, pursuing a man when he’s down crosses the line to something quite different. Thankfully, that made sense to her. Still, I’m shocked that anyone can make it to Grade Ten without even hearing the phrase, ‘Don’t hit a man when he’s down.’ She’s a thoughtful and ethical girl to whom others come for advice, but this most basic value was never conveyed to her in the very institution where her social ethics are formed. At home she learns personal and family values. School is where she figures out her place in society. That necessarily includes conflict and resolution.

Schools are not the places of social integration they used to be. Their mandate today is to impart scholastic information, while pupils are largely left to figure out right and wrong for themselves. Ethics courses teach them the general values of equality and acceptance, but where are the hands-on basics of self-control, fairness and integrity?

Civility is more necessary than ever, but today it seems too troublesome to fight for. Has social conditioning become politically incorrect? School administrators and teachers stand back, hands off, warned not to involve themselves in matters best left to parents. The trouble is, these aren’t family matters. They’re social. If teens don’t learn civility in school, where will they learn it?

The teenage years lie between the complete self-absorption of childhood and the mature responsibilities of adulthood. Do our schools no longer play any role in that transition? Are we living in indulgent times? What do you think?

“But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” —Matthew 5:39

I only recalled this famous bit of advice the other day when it was too late. I wonder if it would have changed the way I reacted.

I was parking at Macy’s in Albany NY, and bumped a concrete post that marked the handicapped zone. A few people looked up, but there was no damage. However, a taxi driver parked a dozen feet away rolled down his window. He didn’t have to shout; he had a loud voice and his tone was belligerent: “Hey you! That’s a handicapped zone. You need a permit to park there. Do you have a permit?”

I looked over at him, frowned and nodded.

He began shouting. “You can’t park there you f****** Frenchie b*******. It’s a handicapped zone.” Obviously, he’d seen our Quebec license plate and jumped to a hasty conclusion.

“Mind your own business,” I said. I’ve encountered nutcases on four continents and learned to regret one thing above all: being dragged down to their level. My golden rule is to neither raise my voice nor curse.

He jumped out of the car, stomped up to me like an angry little boy and placed his nose a quarter inch from mine. I smiled.

“Pepé Le Pew,” he shouted. “F***ing French f******.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. I’ve lived in Quebec for 30 years now, but never entirely lost my British accent. I certainly never acquired a French one. I was angry, but mystified too.

He continued to pour out abuse.

“Why are you so obnoxious?” I asked.

My wife Caroline had by now extricated herself from the passenger door and was waving her handicapped parking permit in the air. Our trump card! “Look…,” she began.

“You,” he swiveled on his heel and pointed at her face. “Shut up!”

“What?” She was shocked into silence – a rare thing.

Now I was mad. “Don’t you speak to my wife like that,” I advanced on him. “Who do you think you are? And how is this your business?”

He drew himself up to his full height – which to his credit was a head shorter than me. “It is my business, f***ing Pepé Le Pew. I,” he proclaimed proudly, “am a citizen.”

“Great,” I said. “So call the police. They’ll protect you from us.”

By now people were standing around open-mouthed. A mother bundled her child into the back seat of a car, glancing fearfully over her shoulder. An incredulous young African-American man approached the cab driver. “What are you saying?” he asked. “You don’t talk to people like that. That’s no way….”

The cabbie turned towards him and glared. The young man looked apologetically at us, turned on his heel and disappeared. I didn’t blame him. If this bizarre man could summon up so much venom for foreigners who were barely even foreign, I could only imagine what he had in store for visible minorities.

He began again. “F*** you! Go back where you come from.”

My blood was rising now and Caroline was calling me nervously to get back into the car. The thought flashed through my mind of what might be concealed in his glove compartment, but he’d returned to the cab and sat complacently with the window down, continuing his mantra of hate.

Clearly, nothing I could say or do would change this man’s mind. Still some hormone drove me to close the gap that separated us. I looked down into his indifferent eyes and said, “We’re leaving now. You’ve scared my wife for all I know you’re planning to damage or steal our car.”

It made no difference whatsoever. Just as I realized I was wasting my time he offered up, “Me, I’m Italian.”

“Really?” Throughout this exchange I’d completely forgotten Christ’s extraordinary suggestion. Worse still, before turning away from him I broke my golden rule by saying something to him in Italian. Something very rude.

It fell on deaf ears. He spewed on.

I believe very much in the power of compassion, but it took me a long time to see this person as sick and in need of help. For the rest of the day Caroline and I went around half-dazed. I felt a sense of mild guilt that I couldn’t quite account for. After all, weren’t we the victims?

Perhaps it was about me not quite living up to my own golden rule. Rather than remaining aloof, I descended to his level … almost. I thought now of another sage, this time the eighth century Indian Shantideva. “When their sandcastles collapse” he said, “children howl in despair. Likewise when I am no longer praised, my mind becomes like a little child.”

So what if some idiot thinks I’m an idiot? Ah, but somehow I did care, and therein lay my shame.