September 23, 2007

• Thinking Too Much Dept., Vol 311.5

  This music (courtesy of brilliant composer Thomas Newman, whose talent for evoking emotional states is perhaps unsurpassed among modern composers) accompanied me, as I wrote this… so I decided to let it accompany you, as you read. Assuming, of course, that you stay to read….

  Sometimes I find that I just need to back away, in order to get perspective.

  Sometimes the swirls of stuff; of possible outcomes; of life itself, get so dense and confusing that I realize that I must be looking to closely at something, to the point where I can’t really see what sits in front of me. The Greek Chorus of my insecurities and doubts chimes in that I think too much– and I believe that is entirely possible, even though I have no idea what “too much” really is. Too much for you? Too much for me?

  Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

  I examine, and write what floats to the top, in response.

  I got to thinking about this virtual space, to where I come and send musings and words out into the world. I don’t write here very often, anymore. I was thinking that I had perhaps just grown “bored” or maybe “too busy” to care… but on a deeper level, this “place” feels like it has “served its purpose.” A bit like… you have a bird feeder, into which you put just the right mix of bird seed, to attract some extremely rare and unique species. It could be anything– an insight, a person, an epiphany, a teacher. Day after day, year after year, you put out the food. Then, one day, the bird appears. You marvel and count yourself among the fortunate few who have actually beheld such rare beauty.

  But then what?

  Do you continue to put out feed, with the same determination and steadfastness you once showed? Do you continue to feed the birds, “just because,” or do you find something else to do?

  In some ways, I originally came here to “be me.” Maybe that sounds weird, since we’re all– basically– ourselves. I guess when I say “be me,” it’s more a case of getting rid of filters. Learning to Be, without filters. It’s funny, in a way, how a handful of people who have known me since way-back-when have occasionally visited these pages and commented how this didn’t really seem to “be me.” It was helpful feedback, in the sense that I realized that they had known an Illusion, rather than Authenticity. I suppose I had some curiosity, as to what “me” meant, in the context of the world… but that was really the extent to which I had any kind of “other orientation.” Which, I suppose, I feel compelled to say in response to those who believe blogging is about ego-gratification.

  I suppose what I ended up reflecting on, this morning, was the issue of “truth” and “illusion,” and the realm of finding and living our authentic truths, rather than play whatever “games” we feel driven to pursue, because we’re feeling unsure of ourselves and/or are socialized to believe they represent what we “should” pursue. We often “think” we’ve reached our authentic selves, even as our insecurities are in the driver’s seat, guiding us towards some kind of pseudo-truth. The real truth often remains hidden. And there’s no guarantee that authenticity is necessarily “pretty” or “nice.” Often its very lack of platitudes is what upsets people… we don’t like our apple carts upset, and human beings.

  And so, as I stepped back and thought about my words, and this “community,” and authenticity, and learning to “be me,” I was reminded of “incidents” in my life, when my truth (at least then, in those moments) came to the forefront.

  I was six or seven years old, and playing outside in the yard at my friend Henrik’s house, back in Denmark. A couple of other boys were there, too… one was a bit of a bully, and he seemed to “get” that I was an easy mark. He had this English policeman’s whistle, and kept blowing it. Noticing that I winced every time he did so, he decided to pursue me, blowing that whistle in my face. And so, I got up and ran… and practiced my talent for becoming “invisible,” hiding under the front steps to the house, and not coming out till the boy with the whistle– his name was Jan– went away.

  While sitting under the stairs, I had some moments of clarity… I saw the “big picture” and failed to understand it, and failed to find my part in it. Why did people seem to “relate” through hurting each other? Why was there camraderie in having a fight? Why did married couples argue fiercely and slam doors, and call it “love?” Why did people create “chaos,” even as they spoke of their desire to find “peace?” I turned inward on myself and pondered why– even as he tormented me– I had absolutely no inclination to want to hurt Jan. Everyone I knew would most likely have tried to beat him up. And then I stumbled upon the larger mystery of why there seemed to be nobody else “like me.” And I pondered why seemingly well-meaning adults would pat me on the head and patronizingly say “Oh, you are just thinking too much,” when I would approach them with the greater question of why people reach for conflict rather than connection and understanding. Then I was told I needed to “play the game” in order to get along in the world. I didn’t want a game, I just wanted to be me. I just wanted everyone to get along.

  For the first time, I formed some kind of idea about “truth” and being oneself. And recognized that it was something that makes people feel alone.

  I was seventeen years old, and at boarding school in the UK. One morning, I found myself headed into the showers, walking across the outdoor cobblestone courtyard, on a rainy dark day. I entered the bath and shower hall, as the first person of the morning to do so. As I came around one of the interior partition walls, I found a boy– of about fourteen years of age– who had hung himself with the belt from his judo kit. He was a soft-spoken, gentle, sensitive person who’d never hurt anyone… but was the chosen prey of many school bullies, because all he did was stand there and take it, without lashing out in reactive anger. For a moment, I saw myself hanging there, and felt how close I was to his fate. And again… I had complete clarity in seeing how the entire world seemed to be built on people visiting pain and suffering upon each other. And the poor kid, whose lifeless body was hanging there, seemed like a symbol for the world around me… as well as a horrible warning to those who don’t play the game. I didn’t want a game, I just wanted to be me.

  I was thirty-two years old. My life was pretty much a giant stinking pit of manure. Crumbling marriage that had already been “over” for several years, meaningless rat race, a hefty income but a mountain of debt, in spite of so-called “success,” a life that seemed dismal and oddly predictable to such a degree that I realized that I was 32, and basically “waiting to die.” I could already see every step I would take, from here till the end. Or, at least, every step that went with the path I was on. I didn’t mind the predictability, so much as the seeming inevitability of eternal nothingness. I was seriously thinking about suicide as a very real option to get away from “it.” “It” being a world that was all about illusion, facade and “playing the game.” About getting ahead, often at the expense of someone else. My discontent was perhaps a result of feeling caught in the vortex of “the game,” and feeling like nothing about it was “right.” Feeling like I didn’t fit. Realizing that I was no good at it, and that I was faking it.

  It was 1992. I went to the movie threater to see Cameron Crowe’s movie “Singles,” which is– in my opinion– one of the more insightful vignettes about the human condition Hollywood has managed to come up with in the last 20 years. I was struck by– and deeply related to– the scene in which Linda and Steve meet at a club and she tells him ”I think your ‘game’ is that you don’t have a game.”

  It bothered me, in a way, that statement. I was bothered by the idea that no matter what you choose, someone, somewhere, will want to dismiss you as a cliché… and will insist that you’re still “playing the game.” I wanted something else. But the world is not built for those who don’t play the game, because it is the playing field on which we relate. I was offended that even being oneself is seen as a “game.”

  I was thirty-five years old. I had spent a few years examining what “it” all meant. My soon-to-be-ex was living in another state, and we were “pretending” to still be married. Pretending we could “fix it,” through marriage counseling. Pretending there was even anything there worth fixing. One evening, I found myself at my friend Diana’s apartment. We’d known each other for a long time… years back, she and her husband had been close friends with my ex and I, in that “couples way” couples seem to have. Now we were both separated, and about to become divorced.

  I was very down on myself and lamenting that fact that I just hadn’t been able to “become” whatever it was I was needed to be. The conversation turned deep and strange, perhaps helped along by the wine, perhaps by a shared intimacy growing out of the fact that we’d secretly had crushes on each other, for almost a decade. Perhaps the weirdness was amplified by the fact that she had grown very jaded and cynical, while I continued to single-mindedly pursue the “search for self,” through some path of compassion and openmindedness. Or perhaps not the search, exactly… but the insistence that I “had to” live as I felt myself to be.

  I was facing it, front and center, as the marriage was winding down. I did not hate my ex, was not “at war” with her, and wanted the best for her. I was constantly accosted by friends who insisted that we were “getting along far too well” to get divorced, and that I was just deluding myself and in denial… that in “reality” I would come to understand that I “should be” hateful and angry.

  Somewhere in the evening, Diana told me I was just “too nice” for my own good… and insinuated that I needed to stop playing the “nice” card. In one of my rare assertive moments, I challenged her to consider the possibility that maybe what she perceived to be “playing” was actually my essence. It took us down an interesting rabbit hole, in which we examined the odd reality of “EVERYone likes Peter” I’d always been living under. I tend to not talk about it, because it feels so conceited to make a statement like that. But it was true. Even before I was “vocal,” a couple of child psychologists who visited my parents as friends commented on what a peaceful, content and self-contained baby I seemed to be… even while they worried about my developmental well-being, because I was NOT having tantrums or testing limits. 35 years later, Diana was telling me that I was the only man she’d ever met with whom she felt no danger of any kind, and free to be completely open… even while she was telling me not to be “playing the nice game.” Very symmetrical…

  I don’t remember all the exact details of the conversation (that’s wine, for you!) but some parts remain clear. At the heart of it, the fact that I was never “trying” to make people like me… but that I had never felt heard and seen for myself, as a result of which I felt compulsively driven in life to allow whomever came through my awareness to “simply be,” in an environment that offered the physical/emotional/spiritual safety I never experienced. Even if I never had it, perhaps I could at least offer it to others. In sense, as Benjamin Franklin once said “If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.”

  Somewhere in there, another moment of clarity occurred; the realization that I had always felt most alien in the world during those times when I was “most myself.” Perhaps… because those times when I was “most myself” also coincided with every comment from the outside, insisting that I really “couldn’t be” who I said I was, often accompanied by assertions of “delusion,” “denial” and “game-playing.” In Diana’s jaded perspective, “nobody is as nice as you, unless they are playing a game to ‘get’ something, or they are out to get their ego stroked.” A recent incident in my personal life reminded me of these words, of hers.

  Now, I should kick in a footnote here, that Diana (at the time) was a practicing psychotherapist with a lot of experience, and not just someone pulling psychobabble out of her ass.

  I wanted to know what it would mean if I was truly not “trying to get” anything, and just being the way I was because it felt right and like what I wanted to be.

  “What if this is really who I am?” I said.

  “If that’s really who you are, you’ll live a life in which you are very, very popular, and very, very alone.”

  “Alone? Why alone?” I wanted to know.

  “People trade on their need to feel special and uniquely loved and cared about. When you treat someone with total kindness and compassion, they love you for it, whether that’s your deliberate intent, or not. They feel special. But when you treat EVERYone with the same kindness and compassion, nobody feels ‘special.’ Unless you play ‘favorites,’ people will not understand where they ‘stand,’ in relation to you. And so, everyone will want to feel that love and kindness, but since you basically afford the same kindness to your neighbor as to the love of your life, you will ultimately be alone because you cannot be kind to everyone and hope to build a special connection with anyone.” 

  Her words stung, which is why I still remember them, although the above is not a verbatim recollection. Her whole subtle innuendo that I “needed to be” something other than myself, in order to get on in life hurt me. She was also the first person who more or less directly told me there was something “missing,” in me… that I “had to be hiding” something. Many people have since made similar observations about “not knowing” who I truly am… and yet, none have ever been able to tell me what it is they are looking for– only that something seems “missing.” One of my old Teachers once observed that it often scares us when we can’t see our own rage, insecurity, jealousy, envy, greed, angst and pain reflected back from those around us, so we project (almost as a form of psychological self-defence) those things onto anyone who doesn’t show them.

  I was forty-two years old. I was having a lengthy email discussion with a friend about the great difficulties we both had experienced in finding meaningful connections in life, both in friendship, and in love. Most of the discussion revolved around destructive patterns, and how– even though we almost always “knew better”– we would almost always find ourselves caught up in chaos and suffering. Chaos, not of our making (although it does take two to tango; chaos, brought to our doorstep… often accompanied by the insistance that unless we participate in the chaos, we “had to be” “detached” and “uncaring.” And should we dare to claim that we had no need for chaos, we’d be assured that we were merely “in denial,” because “everyone” feels that way.

  She related to me something one of our mutual Teachers, Russ Hudson, had shared, at a workshop. He’d said “You will discover that as your level of self-awareness, self-acceptance and inner peace grows larger, so the group of your true peers grows smaller.” And therein lies one of the great ironies of living, and of seeking the true meaning of your life, and your place in it: The more capable you become of forming healthy connections, the more alone you become. In the broadest of senses, people talk about the need to “compromise” in order to get along, in the world, with people, with lovers. But most compromises are merely us giving our consent to be sucked back into the game…

  And so, I arrive at yesterday. A random person asked me a question about something I am selling on eBay. I just sat back and wrote her the kind of answer I would want, were I the questioner. She wrote back, and told me I was the first and only person she had encountered who actually responded to a “non-sales” inquiry, and she asked a few more questions. Which I candidly answered, and sent back, with some additional suggestions, as a result of which a brief exchange followed… at the end of which was a “vibe.”

  And so, I stopped. I stepped back, for perspective, and into the space from where I am now writing these words. Not because there was a vibe. Not because there was marginal “gushing” over my taking a few minutes to help someone. Not because I sensed the earliest signs of some kind of idealistic transference. But because of the world I am looking at… where I felt the profound sadness of a place in which someone taking a few moments to help another and allowing them the space to feel heard is SO unusual that people assign huge importance to it.

  How did we become so disconnected from our source energy; from the basic compassion and truth within us? Why are Diana and Russ right, and what we aspire to is a rarity, rather than the norm? Why the perception that people with the attributes we admire most must be– almost by defintion– “fake” and “hiding something?”

  I am 47 years old. I have almost nothing, and I know almost nothing. I have no “career,” I have no “assets,” I have no “success,” I have accomplished little in the greater scale of life. The one thing I do have, is the knowing of “being me,” along with an unwavering belief that kindness, compassion and love form the cornerstone of Right Being, no matter what skepticism someone might bring to my doorstep. I am an imperfect human, living in an imperfect world. In a few weeks, I take this “Being, without Knowing” to a retreat, where I have somehow ended up as co-host, and somehow have ended up co-facilitating a couple of workshops.

  Perhaps “wisdom” is merely a matter of perception.

  All I was ever asking for was peace, love and harmony. And I intend to continue being love, and sharing love… not because I “get” something, but because it’s simply the right way to live. As someone said to me, recently, if you do something and feel right about it, regardless of whether you’ll get anything in return, then that’s living your essence.

  Then again, maybe I think too much….

  If you have read to the end, thank you for sharing in my self-indulgent musings. The significance of the music is that it also represents who I am. The esoteric worldbeat and trance I normally post are but a tiny fragment of the musical landscape that follows my life…. for all I know, you’ll share the point of view of one person I know who heard these compositions and responded by saying “Great. Now I need to go hang myself.” Why do we fear sadness so much?

  • 8:45 pm
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