One of my favorite quotes is by Ram Dass when he suggests that we can feel blissful on retreat, or in our daily lives and in our practices….but go home for a week and see what happens.
Depression, irritation, anger, sadness! Argh! I thought I was free from all this!
Forms of stress and troubling emotions can sometimes enter the scene within minutes of encountering that person we have lots of memories with, those people who disappointed us, or who are not living their lives as we might have hoped.
We know what that person is like, and it’s downright difficult to be around them!
Even as we knock on the door of their home, or call them, or answer the telephone….we may feel a clench in the gut…ready to brace against that mean, abrasive, complaining, disheartening, unhappy person.
I love when once I realized, that every time I thought about my grandma, who has been dead for almost twenty years now, I saw her face all pinched and angry, her cigarette that was constantly burning, her sad look.
She rarely spoke.
“She shouldn’t have been so sad”.
That is so sad that she was so sad! What a funny thought really…but one I believed since I was a child. Every time I thought of her, I felt a little sad myself.
I wanted to shake my head….oh the waste of a precious life. A hurt, unhappy person, never resolving her life, never finding peace.
I realize how stressful that thought was, throughout my childhood, watching my father (her son) believe the thought, watching him try to help her feel better.
Even now my mind will still make guesses for how much abuse she must have suffered (which I don’t know is true) or how much self-criticism. I never saw her smile!
My mind loves to analyze “now WHY would someone be so sad and quiet, and rarely get up from her chair”.
But as I watch the scenario in my mind, allowing myself to remember very clearly a moment when I saw my sad grandmother in her chair….I realize that I don’t know what is happening in that situation.
I’m not even entirely sure that she IS sad. But even if she is, why is that sad for me?
People around me should be happy. Not sad. IS THAT TRUE?
Yes! It’s so much more fun! It’s easier! I don’t have to think about them! No worries!
Can I absolutely know that it’s true, that people around me should be happy? That my grandma should have been happier in her life? Or that she wasn’t?
No.
The way I react when I see someone and think they are sad, and that this is a sad thing, is that I myself get sad and I want to help them. My throat gets achy, I reach out, I try to make them smile.
There’s all this effort moving towards that person, away from me. As Byron Katie would say, I am in that person’s business, and out of my own business. In other words, I am focused big time on them, not me. And I want them to change.
Whew, it’s a lot of work.
Who would I be without the thought that it’s sad when someone is sad? That people should be happy around me?
For a moment, it may feel heartless. What do you mean, NOT have that thought! I would be careless, disconnected, too detached, selfish, self-centered!
They would suffer even more, I would pay no attention, I wouldn’t CARE, they might even die!
Are you sure?
Turn the thought around: it is NOT sad when that person is sad. People should be sad around me, not happy, if that’s what they are. I myself should not be so sad when that other person I love is sad.
My grandma was just right, perfect the way she was. A human being with an entire life with huge parts in it that I had no idea about. Only a few small pictures in my mind of her really.
As I remember her, I realize that I don’t actually know if she WAS sad all the time in the first place. She lived a long, long life with tons of experiences, perhaps many of them very happy.
I’m not even sure that my dad was upset about my grandma being sad, really, or that it was a bad thing that he felt helpless and unhappy about her predicament.
I realize I know very little….I have simply assumed that the person over there with a sad look, or who is crying, must be consoled and assisted and comforted, or else.
“I’ve heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they’re afraid that without them they wouldn’t be activists for peace. “If I feel peaceful,” they say, “why would I bother taking action at all?” My answer is “Because that’s what love does.” To think that we need sadness or outrage to motivate us to do what’s right is insane. As if the clearer and happier you get, the less kind you become. As if when someone finds freedom, she just sits around all day with drool running down her chin. My experience is the opposite. Love is action.” ~ Byron Katie
I love imagining living the turnaround that my clarity and happiness brings kindness, and the most easy wonderful, loving action with that sad person I know (who, by the way, I am not sure really IS sad anymore).
I don’t have to make special plans for that person, or worry about them, or anxiously hope for their mood to change. I will know what to do, with love.
You will too.
Love, Grace