Why we just stand and do nothing?

I almost exploded of anger. After having stood in the queue along with I guess hundreds of people for almost an hour (for a roller-coaster ride, I am embarrassed to admit), it pissed me off so much to see yet another guy trying to be smart and jump the queue in front of us. So I started to yell at him, and everybody sort of backed away in awe, my kids were a bit embarrassed…, at least my blogging mate Razz would have been proud of me, I guess. Yet it seemed truly strange that I was alone fighting for us all.

A similar thing happened back in Rome, in a hundreds of metres long queue of people wanting to see the Sistine Chapel. A group of three just simply walked by and tried to sneak in up at the very beginning of the line. I jumped there and started a very nervous and loud exchange of words – and everybody else just stood and watched. Later on they kept saying: “Yeah, you were right, they were really arrogant…”, but, hey, where were they while the thing was going on? How come dozens of people did not shout at every little attempt of cheating – and soon nobody would even think of trying it.

Yes, if somebody’s trying to jump the queue it really gets me going. I just value fairness and mutual respect and equality so much. And of course I am aware of inter-cultural differences and therefore I will not make such a scene in cultures where linear perception of time and queuing just isn’t a way of perceiving and living. But both of the above instances were happening here, in Europe, where we do think linear and where we do queue!

Anyway, I am still thinking about this passiveness and apathy of us – and I know I have been often passive and apathetic just as well. It all reminds me of the so-called bystander effect, in which the mere presence of other people restrains our own helping behaviour in an emergency, like in individual cases of murders of Shanda Sharer and Kitty Genovese, the inconceivable human episode of The Holocaust or even Kevin Carter and his Pulitzer winning photo, for which he actually said to had been waiting for about 20 minutes for the vulture to spread its wings – which would make a better shot.

Both my cases are, of course, not anywhere near in terms of seriousness, but perhaps the reasons for a rather large (and thus powerful) group of people being passive while observing individuals obviously violating their rights and boundaries, are somewhat similar or even same. The first might be, as in the by-stander effect, the diffusion of responsibility, because individuals don’t feel the individual drive to act since the responsibility is shared among everybody and thus minimised for each individual.

And the second, which is to my mind more present in my cases, is the urge to behave in correct and socially acceptable ways. Or, in other words, the grand fear of being wrong. The fear of making a mistake, the fear that was beaten into us through schooling and which evaluates every move we make. Is it right or is it wrong? Feeling free to do whatever feels to be the right thing to do opens up a huge amount of responsibility and freaks out our ego.

But, can you imagine a world in which we would not feel afraid of being wrong? A world in which we would dare to speak, act and express ourselves, without first having built up the piles of inner pressure and frustrations? A world in which everybody would stand up, speak up and act when seeing an act of violence… Oh what a world it would be…

The stupid one goes to Barcelona

As weird as it may seem, but I just realized that I am actually tired of myself reporting about my tiredness. Because whenever I do that, I know very well that I am the driver of my life and that the sole reason for me being so tired is the fact that I always prioritize work and responsibility as higher than rest and joy. Always! It may be the guilt, the over-responsibility or whatever, but it ends in a vicious cycle.

So, whenever I say I am tired, please read that I am actually saying I am stupid.

Anyway, this Sunday I will be off to Barcelona for a week. I hope to get some sleep.

Hang on now: To get some sleep in Barcelona?

Now just how stupid does that sound?

Both sides of the same shiny coin

It is funny how being a trainer and a facilitator makes me think very deeply over and over about certain issues of my own personal life – I guess much deeper than I would have, had I worked as, say, an engineer. Perhaps.

Anyway, one of the issues we often play with on my workshops is the question of crucial turning moments of our lives. Moments when we took a big leap into the unknown and so our lives took a radically different course. And so, while working on these things with the groups, I think about my own turning points over and over again.

It seems to me that one of the main turning points in my life was when I, at the age of 17, in secret packed my backpack, took my passport and a few bucks I have had, and left home. This ended in a half-a-year hippy style roaming through the Balkans, Middle East and North-East and East Africa. Partially this was a turning point because I finally ceased whining over my imperfect life, imperfect parents, imperfect teachers…, but rather chose to do something about it; made a bold step into the unknown to see what turns out. I still can not really understand where did I get the courage to do that from. I must had been pretty desperate.

But perhaps even more importantly, this step forced me to start facing the existential dilemma of freedom – at the age of 17. You see, on the one hand there was an utter beauty to the freedom I was experiencing from the moment I walked away from my pre-set life. Suddenly I was totally free, free to go wherever I wanted, free to do whatever I choose to. I was free to rediscover myself every single day, to live or to not live, to carry on a virtuous life or to lie and steal… Suddenly all the moral and cultural obligations started to melt away and the feeling of freedom while moving through my days somewhere on the South Balkans, was incredibly uplifting and intoxicating.

But soon enough I started to discover the other side of the coin, the other side of freedom; the responsibility. When I, a brave free guy, found myself with zero money on the streets of Istanbul, freedom was not so fun anymore. When I was going hungry in the dodgy parts of Cairo, I couldn’t just go home and open the fridge – since there was no home anywhere near. I was free and I was fully responsible for myself at the same time – there was nobody to blame anymore, the way I was used to blame everybody in my previous and not-so-free life. I was also completely free and fully responsible to choose whether I wanted to wait a few weeks – in the company of about a trillion blood-thirsty mosquitoes – in Southern Sudan for the jungle river to recede after the rainy season so that the truck could pass through, or to ford it (neck deep) with the risk of a close encounter with a crocodile, and keep walking on the other side through the wilderness until, well, until I got somewhere. When a drunken soldier had his gun pointed at my head somewhere in the middle of Ugandan forests, demanding money which I did, of course, not have and which I was actually needing just about as badly as he was, it was completely within my responsibility to find a way of getting my ass out of it. Nobody volunteered to take the responsibility for it and I was not in a position to call my daddy to help me out. And so on and so forth…

To cut the long story short, the choice of making that step into the unknown certainly reshaped my life and after that nothing was anywhere near the way it used to be. Not only did all these experiences utterly reshaped my perception and interpretation of life, but the freedom and the responsibility entered full throttle, and they were not just fun. Speaking of freedom; not so long afterwards the freedom crash-landed when I was called to do the obligatory military service. Oh boy, was this a different story altogether, ha ha…

The both sides of this freedom/responsibility coin I am still taking dead seriously – as you may track down throughout this rambling of mine in this blog. And perhaps this is also the reason why I get so irritated with people whining over the imperfect circumstances in their life and acting out this victim role forever. Because I used to waste my time there too and I am still a bit embarrassed by that period.

And perhaps this is why I struggle and juggle so seriously with this dilemma as a parent of teenagers, trying to get the responsibility side of that damn coin across, not as an moral obligation, but simply as another aspect of life. Because I would truly love to contribute to the lives of my teenagers in a way that would help them to at least start sorting out this eternal dilemma of life as soon as possible and enter the adult lives with more inner clarity than I have had. Which is, in the absence of maturity rituals and while trying to not use power over them, not the easiest thing on Earth. But being aware that learning to take full responsibility for one’s own choices and feelings seems to be a crucial step on the path of emotional growing up and also on the path toward a fulfilling life, I just feel that as a parent I definitely wish to find a way to help them in this matter.

Just an ordinary guy

The extent to which we tend to be concerned with our own image, trying to place ourselves and our own worth somewhere on the scale, the amount of attention and energy we dedicate to the impression management, self-promotion…, it all seems pretty ridiculous to me. There are so many other things to worry about in this world of ours.

The tiny little good news – in regards to my tiny little unimportant existence – is that, as it seems to me, lately there has been less urge or even tendency to polish my self image and worry about it at all. To a great deal of relief, because the thing used to be darn exhausting. I used to really cherish this sweet hidden idea that I am special, very special. And that the world yet needs to recognize this. I remember the first cracks on this shiny little devil started with some heavy blows on my thick head long time ago, a sort of waking-up experiences.

One that I really love to remember and still find incredibly funny happened on my first trip to India. I went there, at the age of 20, for the enlightenment and total liberation, of course. I guess thousands of people went to India with the same goal. So, I was not so very special in this regard, but I did like the thought that I would definitely be the one who will actually attain enlightenment, not like the rest of losers who came home humiliated.

So, there I was in a search of a guru. I visited many and was not satisfied (this already sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?) and finally learned about a wise man in a small village up north in Uttar Pradesh, where the Himalayas begin. On my first visit to the village, despite the intense search, I did not find the man. I thought this actually was a good spiritual sign, showing that the path to enlightenment was damn thorny. I loved it. I felt I was ready for any sort of sacrifices, I believed I was ready to face all the tortures needed for the liberation, with a blessed smile of Buddha on my smart face.

Next week, after gathering more info, I returned to the village and finally found him; he was a simple, kind, shiny, skinny old man, with soft eyes, white beard and soft voice. Just what I was looking for. He looked just like Ramana Maharshi and I believed this was the perfect sign. He did not make a big fuzz about himself or his teachings, but invited me to come back in the afternoon, to his home, and to meditate a bit with his friends. I learned later that he did not call anybody a disciple or a student, but just simple friends with whom he liked to meditate. Another good sign for me. He modestly asked me whether I was able to sit down on the floor and meditate for a while and was then overwhelmed with my self-promotion about how well experienced in meditation I was, how I loved to meditate and so forth.

So, I came back later that afternoon and we all sat down, about 6 or so of us, in this little meditation room. The old man lit a candle, explained the form of meditation he was inviting me to practice, and just before we closed our eyes he said that I did not need to worry about time at all since he was going to announce the end of the meditation with a bell, after 4 hours.

What??????? Four hours? Four hours of sitting in lotus, not moving, just meditating?

I did manage to maintain the enlightened smile of a Buddha, but my mind exploded. I never ever did more than 40 minutes in a row, and here I was, on bare concrete floor, with this weird man and his weird friends, to sit for four hours???

It was a 4-hour-torture, to my body as well as to my mind. I did manage to maintain my image, my dignity, my ego, but that was definitely not a meditation.

So, the horrible 4 hours passed, the little bell rung, I slowly started to stretch my burning legs, atempting to preserve my blessed smile. And the old man, with some curious sparks in his eyes and a tiny smile on his face, turned to me and said: “I apologize for being so short with time today and so we were only able to do this much. But tomorrow you are invited to come at 8 in the morning and we will do a longer and more deep meditation, I was thinking about doing an eight-hour stretch.”

This time I was ready and I did not blink: “Great, I will be delighted to come, thank you for inviting me.” I had a plan in my mind already (I had plenty of time in the past four hours to develop a plan, you see) and next morning I caught the first bus out of the village, before 6 AM and oh, boy, was I happy to be on that bus. I did save what was left of my dignity by not showing up, well, sort of, , but my self image was not idealized anymore. Reality started to knock on the door.

So, it indeed is a relief to notice, after a couple of decades, to be less burdened by my own image, not evaluating or comparing myself with others too much anymore, in other words, not taking myself too seriously.

This indeed is how I understand the concept of personal growth: not necessarily seeing chakras all over the place and remembering past lives, but acting out the role of a victim less and be fully responsible in relationships, being aware of my own very human needs, humbly being aware of my own limitations, developing genuine empathy for other people’s needs, overcoming fear of stepping into the unknown… simple things like that.

So, perhaps the fact that I don’t think anymore that I am anything special and the fact that I almost don’t spend any time in front of the mirror – perhaps this is a sign of some improvements.

I regret a lot! With pleasure.

I get a bit irritated by people vehemently proclaiming that they don’t regret anything they have done in the past: “I couldn’t have done it better. I didn’t know better. I was not able to do anything else. So everything was great, everything was and is just the way it was supposed to be, blah blah blah…”

Well, I really don’t know about them, but I experience things much differently. You see, I have done so many things in my life that I deeply regret. I have blamed people a lot, I was even trying to make them feel guilty, I was cold, hard, approached people with demands, accusations… And much more. I behaved this way to adults as well as to my own little kids – and this is what I regret most.

I have also chosen on so many occasions to not do certain things, and I deeply regret these choices. To not give more attention to my kids, to not give them empathy when they needed it, to not choose to connect empathetically with many people when in conflicts with them…

Now, I don’t blame and punish myself for this, at least not consciously, but yes, and this is a very big yes, I do regret and mourn over those choices of mine. Especially those that deepened the gap between me and my beloved ones.

On the other hand, to say I couldn’t have done it better would not be faithful to the truth. Because it was completely within my power of choice to choose something else. To take a deep breath and rethink my next step again. To come in contact with myself and see what my true priorities were.

Looking at these numerous events in my past, truly numerous, I can rather clearly see that I was confused then, frustrated, angry, frightened… and among many needs and values within me I chose a step. Which proved to not be the wisest one, or the most efficient one, that is. And I regret it, as simple as that.

Actually, people, I feel I am actually happy for having this regretting and mourning feelings inside of me. It somehow connects me with existential freedom of choice. And with all the responsibility for my own life, that comes along with this freedom.

The need for God

The other day I realized that I have been omitting writing about God in my blog and I started to wonder why – because I definitely do have many things on my mind about this issue. I guess I was trying to be nice, to not rock anybody’s boat, to play it safe, to not upset (and lose) my readers… A nice guy, you see, that’s what I am.

But, upon realizing this I immediately decided to express what’s on my mind about this topic as well, and so in the next months I intend to write posts on subjects like which God among many, the reasons for talking about God, God’s books, the plans of God, the personality and the values of God… and perhaps other things as well. And I will start with the questions of the need for God.

To begin with, let me paraphrase an old Zen saying:

If you believe in God,

things are just as they are.

If you do not believe in God,

things are just as they are.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what we think or believe about God or anything else, things are and will be just as they are. So, relax, this is what I suggest…

Anyway, the questions whether there is an omnipotent creator of everything is definitely an utterly fundamental question, but there are other questions like this too, like whether there are multiple universes or is this time/space the only one, or whether this universe is expanding or not (and what is it expanding into), and whether we are alone in the universe… All these questions are important, crucial and all-embedding, but in general we do not talk about them all that much and definitely we do not fight or even kill each other over them. Apart from the questions about God. We do kill each other over them.

So why is the question about the existence of God so important and special? Why would we want to stress and expose it over and over again? There are a few possible reasons that pop up in my mind when I ask myself the above questions:

• The existential dilemma of freedom is a scary one, since being completely free to choose also means being completely responsible for these choices. Full responsibility for our lives, for our existence. Therefore the external locus of control, the feeling that control is not within us but out there, in the hands of destiny, God, some ultimate authority, is a very comforting one and perhaps also the reason why we have the need to reassure ourselves, over and over again, that we are children of God. Not fully responsible. Thus not having to fully face the scary freedom of choice.
• Another reason for talking that much about God may be that there’s yet another existential dilemma we are having difficulties to face, and this is the question of meaning of it all. The question of the meaning of life seems to be rather unanswerable and it is not easy, we all know that, to go from day to day without some sort of a steady meaning. Now, the paradigm of the existence of God makes picture perfect and simple, bringing peace of mind. Or at least pacifying the horror of the meaninglessness. You do not have to know the meaning, as long as there is God who knows. So all you need to do is just trust and continue. Knowing that you are on the right side, on the side with a meaning.
• The third possible reason I see for talking about the question of God all that much in our lives could be in running away from the dreadful feeling of being isolated, of ultimate loneliness in this dark and cold universe. If you remind yourself every day that you are actually warmly held in God’s lap, you have this warm feeling of safety and eternal belonging. So the notion of God brings a relief from this isolation. Now, this lack of ability to be alone could be seriously problematic. Fromm said that the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love, and I could not agree with him more.
• The last, and to my mind the most powerful possible reason for having God on our lips that much could be that having a living connection with the supreme force in the universe gives one a tremendous power. By being the child of the greatest and the one and the only God means being in the right club. This connection gives you power over others, the unbelievers, the unfaithful. It was so easy for the Crusaders to kill everybody around by screaming: “God wills it.” It is so easy to fight God’s wars, to be the hand of God, to have this connection to the ultimate authority. Frankly, I have personally met so many “Godly” people, various religions, various cultures, with God on their tongues all the time, but no respect for other people, no love, no empathy, no acceptance, just the will to judge, control, change, punish… On the other hand, so many loving, gentle, respectful, empathic, warm, wise people never mention God at all.

So, these are some possible reasons that I see for the question of belief in God not being just one of the many intimate personal matters we are all having, mentioning them here and there, but rather an ultimately important concept that is not only shaping lives of individuals, but the history of humankind, to a such dramatic extent.

And I wonder what your thoughts are.

May you always be courageous, stand up right and be strong

I admit – in the last 8 years I was not only very critical of the U.S. politics and it’s ways of behaving in this world, but also sometimes had difficulties to distinguish between the politics and the people. On occasions I felt so frustrated while observing the attitude and the values of the US politics – which were directly opposite to my personal values for mutual respect, nonviolence, fairness and responsibility – that I generalized my critical thoughts all over the American people. I admit and this is not something I am proud of.

But today, when learning about Obama being elected and when watching his acceptance speech, I was crying a lot and felt so happy that you guys have elected this person. I love you all and I am grateful for what you did.

Why am I happy about Obama being elected? Well, I do like his thoughts, words, values and energy in general, but there in one thing in particular that seems to be the most important for me: I sense that Barack Obama sees his role of the president as a responsibility to serve people. He seems to be a genuine servant leader and this is what I find absolutely crucial.

Sometimes when I work with politicians I find it so damn difficult to get this idea across, the idea that they are here to serve people (And if they don’t like this, they may as well go home and stop making mess). Their inner reaction tends to be: “No no, I am on the top now and others need to serve me.” They only too often perceive their position of a leader as their chance to tear apart and divide the prey they have finally laid their hands on. For them being a leader means a sort of a competition, who will get to the top, who will win over others, who will be the first.

Now, I don’t believe this is what the true leadership is all about. I believe it is about responsibility, about a call, about a sacrifice, about serving. It is a burden actually, not a prize.

So, I believe Barack Obama is a servant leader and he is a leader I would love to be led by. To be honest, Americans, for the first time in my life in envy you; you have a leader I would love to have.

Yet, I am also fearful. I question myself how much can one person really do in this world that seems to be ruled by the invisible elites and the international clusters of financial power that keep generating far too powerful interests for any individual to fight. This fears and scepticism within me only got increased after having seen the documentary Zeitgeist – The Movie – which I strongly recommend to everybody. It will make you a bit depressive too, but I believe one needs to keep facing various aspects of reality, not only the pink ones, even if they make us unhappy sometimes.

But, despite my own feelings of disillusionment, I am aware that on the other hand there were great people like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Dalai Lama, that indeed did initiate big changes. So, if one’s spirit, wisdom, values and persistence are strong enough, nothing can stop him. If he manages to live long enough.

So, dear Obama, may you live long…