What if you could take criticism without feeling hurt? What if you could get a prestigious job or award and enjoy it without being defined by it? What if you lived in awareness of your pain and pleasure, but also of something more?
When you say, “I’m vice-president of operations,” “I’m a surgeon,” or even the parent of a surgeon, you’re stating a fact. But when you start to feel, “If I’m not [fill in the blank] then I’m a failure, I’m not good enough,” then you run into the trouble we call samsāra.
You think, if I’m not a doctor, I’m nothing. I can’t get as pretty a wife, I can’t drive a luxury car, I can’t afford a custom home in a prestigious suburb. Every triumph seems inadequate. Everything you touch seems tinged with failure. You feel like a sham.
It’s good to have an attractive spouse, nice car and house. But as we all know, if you grip something too tightly, it slips through your fingers. Just ask a lottery winner.
It’s not the things you have that matter. It’s not even how you got them. It’s why.
Samsāra refers to the flow of objects we detect with our senses and the feelings we feel about them. That includes the iPhone 5 you want, that ice cream you’ve been saving in the freezer, the child throwing a tantrum in public and making you feel embarrassed and helpless, the approval of others.
Samsāra includes the constant, nagging tyranny of all the things you have to do: buy groceries, pick up the kids from soccer, lose ten pounds, study for the MCAT.
We evolved to want and fear things, but we are more than creatures that eat, walk, procreate, buy stuff, fight, say some wise and some foolish things and then die, still longing for that other life, the one we almost lived but never got around to.
If that sounds too philosophical, just try this for a week: every time you hear yourself saying “have to,” say the same thing again, but substitute “get to.” I get to pick up the groceries. I get to lose ten pounds. I get to study for the MCAT.
I recently tutored a bright student for the MCAT. Her score when we started was low enough to keep her out of medical school. I knew her challenge was more than just test-taking skills. She needed to see the process from a different perspective.
I told her about the millions of girls who, like her, dream of becoming doctors, of reaching the point where they, too, can say, “I have to study for the MCAT.” Some of those girls, unfortunately, spend their days hauling water like beasts of burden. Some are married off at age 12 and told education is for boys, not girls. Some get acid thrown in their faces, just for walking to school holding books. One of those girls, Aqila of Kandahar, said after she was attacked, “I’m not scared. I want to be a doctor…”
Think of the childless couple who would love to “have to” take the kids to soccer practice or stay up all night with a sick baby. Think of our neighbors who skip meals so the kids have enough. That’s one way to lose ten pounds. When you see it from the point of view of someone who can’t do it, suddenly it seems like a luxury, to get to complain about what we have to do.
In case you’re wondering, my student raised her MCAT score by seven points. Now she gets to have to prepare for med school interviews. But now her purpose is worthy of her greatness and powerful enough to carry her through.
Freedom is about being free to pursue objects that make us happy and protect ourselves from those that don’t. But as Swami Chinmayananda and others have written since before history, there is true freedom and then there is mere license.
This economic depression has meant personal depression for many people, including me. But losing nearly everything you defined yourself by is liberating. You find out that rock bottom is solid ground. A lot of people are happily reinventing themselves in this crisis.
It reminds me of the Janis Joplin song, written by Kris Kristofferson: “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
When I first lived in my own place, I realized that there was nobody there to tell me to clean up. So I let it be messy. I stayed up late, ate whatever I felt like at the moment. I even ate ice cream for breakfast a few times. It was great.
But after a while, instead of finding a higher path, you simply go further down the same one. Your Lexus becomes a Mercedes or Lamborghini. You eat to the point of getting diabetes. God forbid, you even trade in that attractive spouse for a new one, the 2013 model. You get an even more prestigious title on your business card, which is printed on finer paper. Your tailored suit costs as much as most people make in a month and you finally have that sixth zero in your net worth.
But are you happier?
That is the question, isn’t it?
Are you happier? Or did that extra zero really mean nothing?
Here’s a perfect example: I notice convertibles, because I like them. But too often, I pull up next to a new BMW Z and there he is: the driver, maybe with a nice driving cap, even some gloves, designer sunglasses, looking casually from side to side to see who notices him. Someone points to the car and smiles, or gives a thumbs-up. He nods and plays it cool. Middle-aged, obviously has made it, at least financially.
But there’s no one in the passenger seat. No wife, no kids, no buddies. Nobody. I feel for the lonely guy in the expensive car. He did everything he’s supposed to do.
He wanted all the things he’s supposed to want.
But he was unaware of the truth: he didn’t want these things for the sake of having them. He wanted them for the happiness he thought they would bring him.
What is that happiness beyond all things and relationships? It’s the understanding that you are not the body, you just live in a body.
You are not your mind; you just have a mind which thinks thoughts and feels feelings.
You are not your intellect; you are just able to tell the difference between things that change and the changeless.
Still, you are more. You are That which is all things in their wondrous, strange, and varied forms. And you long for those various forms because they seem, in their moments, like ways for you to get closer to that ultimate joy.
But like the lonely guy in the expensive convertible, we have to make sure not to mistake the vehicle for the goal.
When we start to glimpse this underlying truth, we can enjoy the pleasures of life without believing they are happiness itself, we can endure the hardships knowing that they are small on the cosmic scale and that time does heal wounds. We can remain aware of what we’re really doing and choose our responses rather than being slaves to our old conditioning. All our have-tos become get-tos and even our bad days are still good days. We are awake.
And that ice cream in the back of the freezer? Enjoy it knowing you can say both no and yes to it, that it isn’t the only path to happiness, nor something you need to feel ashamed of. It’s just ice cream.
Have it for breakfast if you like.
