Αναθεώρηση Part 10: Learned . . .

I am an inquisitive, indeed curious, person so it is unsurprising that I learned a great deal in 2011 – some things from my own efforts to acquire knowledge and understanding, and some from the generosity or genius of others.

Some things I learned from scratch while others I simply deepened or expanded my learning. There were also some things that I re-learned in the sense that I had all but forgotten about them or what they were.

All in all I am grateful for the things I learned although sometimes knowledge and understanding can be a burden as well as a blessing.

Here are my 11 things for 2011 that I learned or re-learned or learned more about:

1. Dignity

It may be a function of age or experience, or perhaps a softer philosophical disposition, but I learned last year a great deal about dignity. That is not to say I acted with dignity on all occasions that I could or should have – far from it, but there were some occasions that I did and I realized that not only can this be a good thing for me, but also it is often a much more gentle way of behaving towards others.

If I think to the occasions where I lacked dignity it was because my childishness and ego demanded that my complaints be heard, my situation be appreciated more, that I be the centre of attention and so on.

I think dignity is when we have every right to behave in one way – usually demanding, rough and raw, but choose to behave more gently, more subtly, in a more restrained way. It is an act of self-control in the face of easier alternatives.

It relates in some ways to compassion in that it is something we do because we CAN and not because we must. And when we are dignified in our behavior we are often putting the feelings and sensitivities of others before our own. It is kind.

It is an appealing behavior and, building on my learning in 2011, one that I certainly aspire to cultivate further.

2. Patience

Those who know me well would not immediately reach for the word “patience” when thinking of me. Indeed, they would much more likely choose an antonym or just laugh. However, I have made a little progress in learning more about the benefits and practice of patience during the last year.

It is always a battle for me to be patient – to fight my urges, desires, curiosity, insecurity and energy – but there is a time where patience is not only the best strategy, but also provides more satisfaction and well-being.

You see being curious, impatient, full of desire and energetic is often stressful and tiring. For me, and also for those around me. While it brings progress, makes things happen, advances things, it also saps energy from others, feels rough and aggressive at times. I realized that this last year more than previously.

Patience is an expression of trust. A belief that one can let things be and they will follow their own natural order without requiring intervention or influence.

Trusting things, situations and people allows one to be more patient. On the occasions I am patient, I think this is what helps me. The concept of trust.

There is another dimension to patience which is deferral – reprioritizing the thing that one is examining and thus deferring its immediacy and importance in our lives. This is also patience. Not everything has a unit value of 1. Not everything is the most important thing in the world. Not everything needs to be addressed now.

I must work on this in practice.

3. Understanding

“Understanding” in English can mean two things – comprehension and sympathy (or possibly even empathy).

“I need to improve my understanding of the situation before I decide how to approach it” – comprehension.

“Despite his aggressive and rude behaviour, she showed her understanding and left him alone to calm down.” – sympathy

I have learned a lot more about understanding this last year. Firstly from my committed interest in and increasing practice of compassion – which drives both the quest to understand and gain clarity, and then the expression of sympathy or empathy  - although it is perhaps not quite true that all sympathy or empathy is built on proper knowledge, clarity or understanding of the matter concerned. Secondly from my curiosity and desire for knowledge – this ensures that I think about, research, investigate, query and observe the things that interest me until I understand them or at least understand them better.

There is no greater frustration to me than not to understand something – it keeps me awake at night and distracts me entirely.

There is a possibility that this is not a good thing and that it is ok to just accept things for what they are without understanding them. I manage this when I have faith in something – I do not require understanding or explanation for that – so perhaps I should be more moderate in my quest for understanding – and that is my key learning on this subject from 2011.

4. Giving

Again perhaps part of compassion dynamics, but I learned some more about giving in 2011.

I am, I believe, generally known as a giving person. Generous with my time, my energy and my resources, it gives me great pleasure and sense of purpose to give and to help people if I can.

As I grow a little wiser with my years, I am increasingly satisfied just with the act of giving and much less interested in reciprocation. This may be a weakness and is certainly a potential vulnerability, but viewed within the compassion framework I cannot think of it that way.

I have learned however that “over-giving”, when one passes the comforts of recipients no matter how well-intentioned, is not desirable and I need to pay attention to that.

I give because I can and it feels right to do so. However, to be a good giver, one needs to think not only of the giving but also of the receiving. We should only give what someone is able to receive.

Something I learned in Greece all these years was the art of hospitality – φιλοξενία as it is known. Friendship to strangers or guests from its literal root – for as I have written about before, the Greek work for “guest” and “stranger” is the same.

My biggest learning when it came to hospitality – of which the Greeks are the world’s masters – was not how to give hospitality, but how to receive it. And the best host is the gentlest and most sensitive host. Discrete, dignified as well as generous and warm.

So to be a better giver, I learned last year that I must think more about how much and what someone can receive and not impose myself with my kindness or generosity if someone cannot accept it. For then the purpose of giving is defeated and instead becomes an act of aggression or pressure – and that is not the kindness that is intended.

5. Joy

Last year I experienced joy once more. I re-learned what it is to be truly and ecstatically happy. It ought to be something that is very energetic and stimulating – and there were moments where it was indeed like a burning, blinding light – but my abiding memory of the joy I experienced last year was of peace. Of calm. Of a sense of “fit” with the world and my existence in it. And the fact that I smiled and laughed a lot more.

Joy is temporary of course and we would not know it as joy or feel it as we do if it was not contrasted with pain, misery and all the shades of happiness in between. So we should not lament its passing too much as if it were to stay it would certainly diminish in force and strength. As written elsewhere in this collection of essays – we need the contrast in life to feel things.

My joyous periods last year were so bright precisely because they contrasted with the feelings and emotions of the period that immediately preceded them.

While I have of course known joy before, it has been sometime since I can really recall the feeling. I think my learning last year was to truly treasure the moment.

To live in the “now” of those moments and not be too distracted by the future or the past. I was somewhat successful in that attempt but not entirely. . .

6. Sadness

Perhaps somewhat predictably or inevitably I also learned more about sadness last year – as a flip side to the joy I experienced, but also as the world around me and specifically certain people around me underwent terrific hardship, change and experienced great fear.

Perversely perhaps, I learned there is a warmth in sadness – it is not always cold, steely and grey. When we allow ourselves to get as close as we can to the root of our sadness and allow ourselves to express our sadness in an appropriate (& dignified) way then we can find great relief, comfort and warmth from this emotion.

I also learned that sadness is a tiring emotion and one, which if experienced over a long period, can drain you enormously.

Fortunately, I am blessed with an ability to process sadness quite well – I digest reasonably quickly. Possibly because of my desire to understand and possibly because I am not afraid of sadness any more – so I don’t avoid it or put it off. Instead I tend to embrace it, deal with it, live it and then move forward.

I do need to learn more about handling my sadness with more dignity – because frankly, being a misery guts is not a good look – and to continue to work with my sadness in a constructive way.

7. Now

I spent a lot of time thinking about “now” in 2011. To treasure moments, to free myself from the future, to depart from the past – there were many moments, many reasons and many opportunities to think about “now” and I learned a great deal from it.

As noted in my lengthy essay on the subject (I promise I will get around to editing that one at some point!), “Now” is difficult. The present is the hardest time to live, and it is the only time we live despite our best efforts to languish in dreams and memories to avoid it.

When I have managed to center myself on being very present in my life and thus be very “now”, it has been an increasingly positive experience.

I am lucky in that I am a highly instinctive person with an intuition bordering on the extra sensory – so I am able to detach myself relatively easily from some of the infrastructure of my mind because I retain the comfort of my instincts and intuition as protection. But it being “now” remains hard and requires practice.

Meditation, contemplation and usually solitude help. I learned lots from my “now-ness”. Give it a try.

8. Compromise

I wrote about this topic in the summer and consequently / subsequently thought a great deal about it and tried to put my thoughts on the subject into practice.

I have traditionally a love / hate relationship with compromise – espousing it vigorously on the one hand as a mediating principle and the best example of balance, respect and mutuality, and on the other hand exempting myself from inclusion in the game of compromise because my ideals and goals cannot be compromised and my ego will not relinquish its selfishness.

That said, with conscious thought and analysis, and factoring in the motives for compromise – love, respect, dignity, compassion to name a few – I have found it also to be a worthy act and one which is both becoming and desirable.

But as with many of these worthy behaviours, I also learned it requires balance, perspective and propriety.

9. Confidence

2011 saw me get more of my old confidence back again. I learned to be bold once more, to take risks and to feel good about it.

Anyone who knows me professionally only will find this a very odd statement, as I appear very confident at work. Appearances, however, often bely the truth.

In my private life however, for reasons not worth going into here right now, my confidence has not been strong for some time.

My own mother asked me a couple of years back why I had stopped being funny and the only reason I could think of was because I had lost my confidence. It was a supremely depressing moment and caused me deep introspection.

Since then – and last year marked significant learning on the subject – I have worked on my confidence in quite a focused way. I am distinctly more comfortable with who I am and what I am than perhaps ever before (although this is not to say I do not have work yet still to do) and I am clearer about what I need and want in life – these two things alone allow one to be a little more confident.

But more than philosophy, I have empirical reason for my increased confidence – I have got my humour back (not all of it - I will be funnier in time – be patient!) and I have got my energetic spirit back into my personal life too. When put into practice in 2011 they worked well for me – people laughed, people engaged, I was my old self and I engaged much more with my interests such as music, travel, writing, photography etc…

I also learned that your real self is always more pleasing to others and to you than any assumed or acted self can be – and so the need to assume a self other than yours or act out a part immediately become redundant. That gives me confidence. Think about it.

10. Humour

As referenced above, my increased confidence has increased my humour quotient and I feel moderately funny again. This is important to me because I enjoy laughter and fun, and more importantly I enjoy giving it to other people – and I used to be absolutely brilliant at it until I lost my way.

Humour is a strange concept. Much of what makes us laugh is very ephemeral and eccentric. Much of it is also black – schadenfreude, irony, sarcasm, satire – all somewhat aggressive or negative and yet they make us laugh.

Other people’s misfortune is at the heart of much humour – and it is because of the psychological release we have when we realize that something bad is happening to someone else is not happening to US. Usually when the bad thing is not something deserved or foreseeable.

Example: Man slips on banana skin. Funny. We laugh, not because he is going to hurt himself, but because it is something random and unlucky (he didn’t do anything to “deserve” the banana skin) and it is NOT happening to us.

Beyond from the inherent humour in the misfortune or deprecation of others, I actually believe the greatest humour is really all about “wit”.

I cannot define wit in any meaningful or helpful way, but we all understand wit when we see it. It is a kind of intelligence combined with intuition and observation. And wit is an enormous platform for humour.

I do not like jokes. With very few notable exceptions, jokes are constructed witticisms to enable the unfunny to make people laugh. The least funny people I know, know the most jokes – because they are reliant on them. Jokes are an easy route to humour if wit has abandoned you.

But the really funny people – Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard, Dave Allen, Peter Cook, John Cleese for example – don’t tell jokes. They don’t construct humour from a formula – they observe, deprecate, challenge and point out paradox and obtuseness from everyday life – and they do it with great wit and intelligence.

I once watched Billy Connolly perform live in a theatre in London. A stage, a stool, a spotlight, a microphone and 4,000 people in front of him demanding he make them laugh. Within 3 minutes of his 2 hour plus performance he owned those people, controlled them totally. And what a rush! What a high! All that power, all the energy and all of it resting on his next word, pause or expression – where it could all be lost in an instant. Agony and ecstasy – I can only imagine how wonderful that must feel.

For me, I don’t see myself in the theatre anytime soon. I’m just not that funny. But I can envisage myself sending people into paroxysms of laughter at dinner parties or other gatherings once more.

I can see myself seeing more and more of the funny side of life and recording it, replaying it and sharing it. Why? Because I am a much happier person than I was. And because with my confidence returned, I have learned to be funny again. A bit.

11. My Self

Regular readers and even those who have just read my review of 2011, will have probably figured out that the thing I have learned most about in 2011 is my self.

It is no accident of course. I have wanted to and actively spent time on doing so. Many of my reflections, discoveries and thoughts on what I have discovered about my self, have been recorded as essays on this blog, while some are still too new, too raw or just too deeply personal to make it out here yet.

I continue to feel my self as a “Xenos” - my “nom de plume” and alter ego – my creative identity, my perceived self. The guest & the stranger.

But I am being much more hospitable to the travelling stranger inside me, being warmer and kinder and getting to know the stranger within a little better. One day I will cease being a stranger to my self and I have a good idea precisely which day that it, but until then I – as everyone – will continue to make the journey to self-understanding and spend time with the most familiar stranger I know.

What have I learned specifically about Xenos this year? That I must be compassionate to my self as well as to others, that the past doesn’t have to dictate the future and that “now” is where we all, including our selves, live.

Αναθεώρηση Part 8: Moments . . .

There were many wonderful and poignant moments for me in 2011.

These are the 11 that I recalled most vividly and which perhaps were the most important:

1. New Year’s Day 2011

A New Year’s Day at the southern most tip of the African continent. A new group of friends, new goals for the New Year and a bright, glorious sunshine to somehow set the tone for the 365 days that lay ahead.

We had a lunch by the sea in Cape Town in the wharf. We all announced our achievements and regrets for the previous year as well as the hopes and goals for the new one. The high points and the low points.

Most of that same group were together this year and most had achieved their hopes and goals for 2011.

Most, but not all.

2. Banyan Tree Weekend

In Spring time three single friends and I decided to go away for the weekend to the very luxurious Banyan Tree Hotel resort in Ras Al Khaimah. Two guys and two girls.

The two guys went on dirt bikes and crossed the desert in a magnificently epic journey, while the girls went by car and by road.

We found the girls at the two villas we had rented and sat down to some food to fill our empty stomachs. Then we all jumped into the pool and the drinkers drank champagne as the sun went down, while we discussed life, laughed hard and let ourselves relax.

That weekend cemented a set of friendships that have been really important to each of us all year.

Although no-one has been on a jet ski since…

3. Goat in Aristi

My 40^th birthday came to pass in the sanctuary of the Aristi Resort Hotel which is written about and referenced elsewhere in this blog.

For the celebrations I had requested a goat from the village be slaughtered and roasted on the spit in the traditional fashion. This was duly done and the goat roasted gently under the watchful eye of one of the black clad widows from the village. When brought to the table with salads, wine and bread, I believe everyone – even the vegetarian in our group – salivated visibly.

Before long we were each grasping freshly cut chunks of roasted goat, supping strong red wine and laughing and conversing in time honored fashion. I was honoured by my friends toasting my birthday and was touched in particular by the kind words offered to me by my guests and companions.

It reminded me that there is nothing as unifying and edifying as sharing a meal and conversation with good friends.

The goat may have had a slightly different opinion – especially as I was offered his «αμελέτητα» (you can guess what this means) as the treat of the day…

4. Beach on the Northern Coast of Egypt

In early summer I travelled to the north coast of Egypt – down the road aways from Alexandria – for the wedding celebrations of a colleague and good friend.

The celebrations were an informal affair at her beach house and a wonderfully diverse and interesting group of people gathered – from documentary film makers to musicians, politicians to businessmen. The mood was La Dolce Vita meets Arab Spring.

Discussions of Egypt’s political future were punctuated by dialogues on the blues, the sexual exploits of Omar Sharif and why the residents of the front row of beach houses wouldn’t be coming this summer. (They were all in jail awaiting trial!)

We headed to the beach in the afternoon and sat on lovely white sand by the Mediterranean, drinking ice cold beers and eating fresh clams out of aluminum foil straight from the fire they had been cooked on.

A simple, delightful gathering of interesting people at play. The afternoon turned to evening, coffees and sun downers were drunk before everyone departed for an hour or two only to return for the party which went on beyond dawn – including a virtuoso live performance by Egypt’s leading female Darbouka player. A magic weekend of little sleep and much stimulation.

5. Greek mountain weekend #2

Not content with one weekend in the mountains at Aristi, I spend another weekend in Elati near Trikala with a good friend who invited me to Greece for the weekend which I accepted on a whim.

We rented a car in Athens and drove up to the mountains to a lovely “Ξενωνα” or guest house in the village. Conversation was plentiful and sparse in equal measure, with both of us knowing each other well enough to have no issue with either.

A taverna dinner of freshly grilled meat and rough local wine lead to deep discussions of the soul - its sicknesses and its salvation. A last stop in a tiny little bar near the guest house saw spirits mixed with rock n roll. Lots of memories of times gone by for my friend and conversations with the bar owner about 70’s rock bands and the influence of the blues on Led Zeppelin for me. A late finish followed by sleep concluded a great Greek day.

The next was slower due to the inevitable hangover, but included a magnificent lunch in the mountains in an old taverna sat by a log fire outside on the veranda as it rained and hailed so hard there were dents in the roof of the car. There was nothing for it than to eat goat soup, mountain greens and rough local red from the barrel.

The trip back to Athens the next day was slow and dull, but as I drove I got news on my phone that a couple that I had introduced to each other and whose wedding I had attended a few years earlier, had had their first child. A baby girl. Within an hour I was at the maternity hospital with a overjoyed new dad, a tired grandmother and an exhausted but thrilled mother – and their new joy, the baby.

An hour later I was at the airport and heading back to the land of the sand…

6. Dinner by a little harbour. .

The anticipation that had built to the point of total distraction was suddenly and painlessly released by her arrival – a moment that came to pass as easily and naturally as a page turning in a book.

A warm greeting, pregnant with curiosity, was followed by nervous discussion and then deep dialogue.

Interrogation, hesitation, investigation, consideration, interruption, hesitation, interaction, continuation…

Imbibe, listen, nibble, speak.

Waves beat gently against the harbor wall, an old woman watched from afar…with benevolence and warmth

I was there, present. It was “now” then.

Her hair had curls and her eyes smiled.

She breathed gently and easily as she slept.

I found my peace.

7. A hotel in Nisantasi. .

A door opens into a room.

A split second of extreme excitement immediately translated into a vigorous embrace  . . . and relief.

A moment of silence.

Eyes scanning furiously to verify the vision is real and no longer just dreamt.

Conversation. Electricity. Vitality.

Peace. Home. At last.

8. A café in Kurucesme. .

One morning, in the late Summer or early Autumn, I sat by the Bosphorus and ate eggs and sesame seed coated Turkish bagels, drank fresh orange juice and strong coffee and gazed across the table at the woman who sat there with me.

Her hair was blowing gently in the breeze, her smile warming me even more than the sunshine. We talked about this and that, we held each other’s hand, we laughed and played.

Sometimes one is suddenly acutely aware of the wonder of a moment, as well as its ephemeral quality.

Such was this moment and many others that followed it, destined to become memories at best.

The name of the café was “Aşk” – it means “passion” in Turkish.

9. Desert Ride

There is nothing more uniquely solitary and free than riding a motorcycle through the desert. Inherent danger and risk mixed with total liberation from the constraints of the built up world.

Deserts have a curious nature and peace – an alternative ecosystem unrecognizable and intimidating to the city dweller used to being crushed by the structures of the urban jungle.

Intense heat, tough terrain, a small satellite device the only thing ensuring direction and destination. The physical challenge of negotiating a large pile of metal and plastic with wheels up sand dunes - at times the size of houses and office buildings.

In the summer we would leave home at 4.30 am when it was still dark and be in the desert ready to ride by sun-up. A group of up to 50 bikes and riders would congregate most weekends and within just a few seconds of departing our starting point all would be spread out and invisible to each other for the next 2-3 hours. Even riding in my small group of 2-3 friends we would only see each other sporadically as we crossed the never ending sand.

My moments in the desert on top of my bike have been incredible intense, clearing everything from my tired head and filling me with an incredible sense of vitality and life.

And I don’t crash every time either…

10. Insomniac moments

At first it drove me crazy. My sleep had been cruelly stolen and my body was left restless and awake without the benefit of enough rest. My mind raced and in its frustration created anxiety and stress. A slow developing living hell in the darkness of night. The final "coup de grace" as the attempt to sleep is suddenly abandoned on an instant and one starts what will be a much longer day than hoped or planned.

But after a week or two of sleeplessness, I began to discover my night self. Thoughts and thinking that would be impossible in the light of day. Conversations and connections with other insomniacs that radiated clarity like a 100 watt bulb and created intensity in my mind and a strange hunger for illumination.

My insomniac period inspired writing, music composition, philosophizing and a proximity to self which is hard to find in daylight hours.

I prefer sleeping as a rule, but now insomnia is not the enemy I once thought it was. 

Indeed, I have some things to thank it for.

11. Istanbul flights

I made several flights to and from Istanbul this year at different periods and stages. Some were filled with excited exhaustion as I tacked on a flight to Istanbul directly after flying from Australia while others were melancholic and forlorn. Others still were warm and nourishing while the last flights were alternately anxious and sad.

The only thing in common with these flights was the fact that I cannot remember time passing on any of them. Time stopped still on each and yet simultaneously fleeted away faster than travelling light. As such these flights were timeless.

I discovered something very exciting thing on these flights while I was lost deep in thought and reflection.

I learned that when we remove time from our thinking, its shadow is lifted. Life, and the things that matter, attain a different clarity and light without time to confuse us about them.

Sadly, flights end (or planes crash) – and with every landing, time came rushing back to me with its darkness and shadow. . .

Insomnia #1 - Now-ness

Over the last few weeks I have not been sleeping well. In fact, I have hardly been sleeping at all.

I am used to difficult sleep patterns due to my constant travel and I am a light sleeper, but in the last few weeks my lack of sleep has been pretty acute.

I think there have been a number of contributory factors – pain (my shoulder), stress (work + life) and the influence of heavy anaesthetic for surgery which messed up my schedules totally – all in addition to the “had a bad day, got things on my mind, shouldn’t have had that cup of coffee” phenomenon that is more usual.

One of the good things about insomnia is that by definition you have a little more time on your hands.

This time allows you to think, to reflect, to consider and also more importantly perhaps to simply absorb, to get used to things or make things part of you. Something which ordinary time passing does anyway – but with insomnia ordinary time is accelerated slightly through having more hours awake.

It also gives you the chance to catch up comfortably with other insomniacs without the deadlines of appointments, work, etc. Nighttime is free time for everyone - although most people choose to use this time for sleeping – so as long as your insomniac friends are in the same time zone then conversation is very relaxed.

Several conversations I have had over the last few weeks, combined with my own experiences have led me to focus on thinking about the idea of “Now”. The present. This ephemeral, yet timeless state of being we all exist in but surprisingly few choose to live in . . .

We usually segment our lives into three time parts and spend, frankly, an enormous amount of time on two without spending nearly enough time on the third part. Those parts are our “past” which we usually characterize as our experience and the “future” which we usually characterize as our dreams, our goals, our ambitions. We think that our past prepares us for our future, somehow even decides our future.

We think of past and future, experience and dreams, as good things. Positive, helpful things. We spend hours, days, weeks actively engaged in two activities which I am going to argue are ultimately pointless, but more than this, are damaging.  We all too rarely stop to consider, let alone LIVE, the part that is sandwiched in the middle. The present. The “now”.

Reflection & projection. Considering the past, planning the future. We do it in our work – where we call it reviewing and planning – and we do it in our personal lives. Almost all the time.

As a result we miss almost entirely the opportunity of the present. Because the present is a constant dynamic – indeed it is almost an abstract concept – it has the possibility of eternity. IF we can find a way to live in the present more completely, I believe we can live more happily.

Broadly speaking our obsession as people with the past and the future, on reflection and projection follows two main paths – both equally unhelpful and dangerous. One path is the path of negativity and the other of positivity. Let me explain . . .

Negativity is easier for most of us to understand. Consideration of the past in terms of negative reflection is usually described as “regret”. The mistakes we made, the choices that turned out badly, the things we wish now – with the benefit of hindsight – to have done differently.  Except hindsight is a deception. A sleight of hand.

“If I’d known then what I know now, then I wouldn’t have done X”.  In other words, if someone could have told me the future, I would have had better information to make my choices. . . But of course no-one can tell the future.

Hindsight – or the ability to see looking back – is a psychological game we play with ourselves to try and prepare for the future. Looking back is in fact looking forward. Trying to desperately find something in the past that can predict the future that we are all so obsessed with. But it cannot.

Why do we obsess with looking back and reflecting on our regrets? Because we are afraid, often terrified, of the future. Our nature as humans is that we want everything to be wonderful and we are terrified that it might not be. So we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to control, influence and predict what we cannot. The future.

We make our choices in life and then we live with them. The ones we don’t like we can choose to see as mistakes and regret them OR we can choose to see them as steps in a progression which is as integral a part of us and our identity and states as the DNA which we are born with.

While I am not saying that we should never look back and consider our actions – we should – I am saying that we should not spend too much time in this or attach too much importance.

Mostly because we will find in our future fearing logic, that we have made millions of errors. And our regret will start to punish us with melancholy and increased fear for the future until the point we become totally depressed and totally paralyzed in the face of tomorrow, unable to make any decision in case it is a “bad one” and so spoils our plans for the future.

Instead I would advocate that we reflect on our mistakes in the following ways:

1. Mistakes are permanent. And once made are as irreversible as ink on paper. (There is a Buddhist parable that I read years ago that seeks to explain karma - A man wakes in the night, takes his pen and writes a letter. Later he decides he is not happy with the letter and takes the paper and puts it in the flame of the candle. The paper is burned and the letter is no more. But while the physical evidence of the letter is no more, this does not actually remove the existence of the letter. It was written. Paper and ink were used. It occurred in time. It therefore exists and can never be unwritten. So it is with mistakes.). So once we accept the mistake, our regret is redundant. Regretting something cannot undo it. It will not make it disappear. And it will not prevent it from happening again necessarily – another naïve idea that we hold. That focusing on our mistakes and regretting them will somehow magically prevent us from making them again. It won’t. (Not that there are not ways of avoiding mistakes in the future – there are, but I will come to that later).
2. Mistakes are human. To make a mistake, a “bad” choice, to screw something up is not a weakness that somehow causes us to fail in our bid for humanity and life. Conversely, it is something that qualifies us for humanity and life. We would not be human or have any quality of life if we did not make mistakes. It is not something we should punish ourselves for, but something we should embrace as vital and necessary for our continued happiness. Our mistakes expand our experience and grow us just as much -  and sometimes more – than our other learnings. They sometimes leave us with pain or unhappiness, but without pain or unhappiness, how would we know what comfort and happiness feel like?
3. Mistakes are who we are. They define us, shape us, make us who we are. Instead of regretting our mistakes we should recognize that at any given second or fragment of time in the present, we are there and who we are in part (often large part) because our mistakes brought us there and made us who we are. Now –before anyone says, “yes, but my life is unhappy, and I do not want to be this person now in the present and it is because of my mistakes I am”, let me clarify that unhappiness in the present is only there due to the inability or failure to actually live in the present and the now.

People who are unhappy live not in the present – they are absent from their lives because they are living in the past and the future.

The American author and playwright Fulton Oursler wrote:

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.”

The past and future steal from us. Our obsession with them takes away our present. And – by default and definition – we are actually only alive in the present. We cannot be alive in the past because it has gone and we cannot be alive in the future because it is yet to happen. So if we are absent from the present because of this obsession, then we are not alive. Or at least not living.

It is not just “reflection” and the consideration of the past that can confuse us, and steal from our present, our now. The future is equally problematic when we end up obsessed with “projection”.

It is something of a natural condition to be afraid of the future. To fear it. After all what is more normal than fearing the unknown. And the future is the one true and complete unknown for all of us. Worse, the only thing we as humans know about the future is that we are going to die at some point. So – pretty clear why it might be scary. We have no clue what’s there and it will end in death.

When looking at our negative approach to our existence in time we can see how focusing on our past causes pain and detracts from the only time we are alive – the present. We can also see why this drives us to additional fear for the future.

This additional fear is built on the premise that “If I made so many mistakes in the past, caused so much pain and unhappiness for myself, then if I don’t find out why and stop this from happening again then I will make mistakes like these in the future and my life will never be happy. And time is running out for I will die in the future and who knows when...”

We have all had that thought in some degree or another at some point. This terror is common – and particularly common to people who have lost the ability to live in the present. They are truly crucified between regret for the past and fear for the future as Oursler wrote. But we say that history doesn’t repeat itself. So why would our future be a repeat of our past? Just because we fear that it might be doesn’t mean that it will.

Indeed, if we accept that our mistakes are not to be regretted but to be seen as steps in a progression that makes us who we are in the present (see above), then we can probably – at least logically – expect that process to continue in the future. So instead of constant repetition of the past, we can enjoy growth and development.

We project far too much of our past on the future than we should. I think one reason is that given the choice of complete unknown or something, however regret laden it might be, we think that something is more concrete and that we can somehow work on it and create some predictability and hope that will help us approach the future more comfortably.  

This is, however, a false notion. The future remains always unknown – no matter what we try to project on to it. Positive or negative. We cannot control, predict or shape our future any more than we can eradicate or undo the mistakes we have made in the past (which again, I argue, are not mistakes and not worthy of regret. They were just choices which we made for good enough reasons at the time. AND those choices led us to “now”.)

Reflection and projection are not confined only to the negative.  We also reflect and project in what we think is a positive way about both the past and the future. Our happy memories and our dreams for the future. They are good, wholesome and make us feel warm and happy.

Except they are as equally unhelpful, painful and dangerous as our regrets and fears . . .

Our happy memories are no different from our memories of our mistakes. Indeed while we “over” regret our mistakes, we tend to “over” celebrate and nurture our happy memories. Like mistakes, those things we did that brought us happiness and joy cannot be eradicated or undone - they are permanent. But also like mistakes they are no predictor for the future. They have led us – together with our mistakes – to where we are now. In the present.

But if we believe our memories of past happiness are going to somehow mitigate the fear of the future then we are deceiving ourselves. Because the moment that this does not happen – and it cannot logically happen – our past memories of happiness will slowly come to be seen as mistakes and the cause of regret which will in turn burden us with greater fear for the future.

The same is true of positive projections in the future – our so called “dreams”, “goals”, “ambitions” . . .

I was asked recently by someone to share what my dream life would be. I was unable to answer. I made some attempts at describing how I would live – values, beliefs etc – but I was unable to easily answer “what” specifically would be my “dream life”. The only thing I could think of was what is lacking to me in the present. What do I want in my life - now.

Contrast with a few years ago when I had plans and goals and dreams galore. Timetables, specific milestones, achievements, benchmarks, directions and so on. I used to project into the future and create a whole life of results, progress, and destinations. Except I started noticing that almost nothing turned out according to plan. Nothing worked out personally or professionally. Indeed some things happened that were so “off plan” that it would have been scarcely imaginable to me that these things could happen when I had been making those plans . . .

Of course I spent quite a bit of time looking back and reflecting on my plans and dreams and finding that this difference between what had happened and what I planned or dreamed for myself was huge. I concluded that I must have made mistakes if my plans had failed – and it was of course easy to find the mistakes. Anything that took me away from the plan was a bad decision. Anything that ended up with me being unhappy in the past was a bad decision or a mistake. It became very easy to build a large catalogue of mistakes and analyses to go with them that would form my encyclopedia of regret. And I punished myself for this by setting stricter and stricter directions and guidelines for the future. If my laxness and lack of discipline, thought and analysis in the past had caused my mistakes, then my discipline, focus and effort in the future would ensure this would not happen again. I re-cast my dreams with more specificity and rules, more direction and guidelines. I would achieve my plans, I thought. I just needed to be more sensible, tougher on myself and it would all come true.

Well you don’t need to read this to know that of course that didn’t happen. Life continued to unfold in ways that could never be predicted. Some brought happiness, some brought sadness and all took me further and further away from the plan and the dreams I had made. My discipline and toughness on myself only caused me more distress to add to the building regret, and the increasing desperation of finding a solution to the future. Finding a way to ensure my plans came true.

I don’t remember when or even if I had an epiphany on this subject – perhaps it was in the period after my divorce – but I came to the conclusion that if I didn’t want my plans to fail, I should examine again why they failed and work from there.

I discovered that the reason why my dreams never came true as I had imagined them and my plans never worked out as I wanted was not because I made mistakes. It was simply because my plans could never work and my dreams could never come true for the simple reason that they were built on things in the future that were unknown and the further the plan or the dream reached into the future, the further it was destined for failure.

While this discovery was exciting it was also worrying at the same time. What will I do if all my plans are destined to failure? If all the specific things I have dreamed of are in fact subject to so many unknown variables that they too cannot succeed? And of course all plans and dreams are vulnerable to failure when any part of them relies on the unknown - and I am yet to see a dream or plan for life which doesn't . . . 

So – I decided to stop planning and stop dreaming. At first it was a question of simply scaling down my plans in terms of specifics and timescale. I made plans for a much shorter period of time (I think this comes naturally with age by the way although logic can provide the method for younger people) and I was much less rigid about the specifics of those plans.

As time passes I have very few dreams and plans of any real specificity. I allow myself to speculate on the future occasionally – it is very hard not to - but now I try to live in the present as much as I can. And that means accepting that things could go this way, or they could go that way. By being closer to myself and having a better relationship with my self - I can roll with life. I’ll deal with what I need to deal with when it comes and not before.

For example: I was recently given some positive future looking news about my professional life. It was nice to hear. But I refused to get very excited about it precisely because it is in the future. Friends and loved ones on the other hand got very excited and some even began talking around the possible future development as though it had happened already. I know that it could happen, but I also know that it could not happen. Indeed I know that I might make it not happen, just as much as someone else might make it happen for me. My point being, I took the “now” part of the news – which made me feel good. It made me feel positive and recognized. I left the future part of the news for the future.

The same thing applies to the question I was asked about my dreams – my specific dreams for my life in the future. All I could answer was what I want / need / am missing now. It was a very simple thing that I answered. Very clear and understandable – because it is now. It is not built on the assumptions about a future we cannot know nor the fear of a future decided by our past. It is built on who I am and what I want now. Now. Now. Now.

It is not easy to live in the Now. First it is hard to detach from the habits of reflection and projection. Second it is hard to live outside the structure that these give us – for they do give us structure. Third it requires us to be comfortable with ourselves – for in the Now we are very present and connected to ourselves. And that means trusting ourselves – a lot. That’s hard to do in the beginning and is foreign for many people, but you have to ask:

“Do I dare

Disturb the universe?”

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock – T.S. Eliot

Prufrock is the ultimate example of someone who has exiled himself from “now” and only lives in the past and future – trapped and denied life. This is the true sadness, indeed tragedy, of Prufrock – the absence of now. Indeed the “women who come and go, talking of Michelangelo” are the only evidence of “now” in the poem and they are the contrast to Prufrock and his thoughts. They are living, Prufrock is not.

“Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

Terrorized by fear of the future he is paralyzed from making decisions, and ends up using time as his way of avoiding them . . .and life.

“In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse”

No-one needs to be a Prufrock  - they simply need to choose to live in the “Now”.

[And you who are reading this and know these words, you are not Prufrock either. You never were – you were just frightened you could become him. You will not wear the bottom of your trousers rolled. One of the reasons I am here is to show you that. As you have slowly begun to realize . . ]

We need to be able to accept pain and happiness on equal terms. To feel them and see where they take us –without caving into the temptation to reflect or project. Trust yourself – and the reason we should trust ourselves is because we are the most authentic true individuals in our lives. Accepting that truth is a leap – but once taken life changes quickly afterwards. Not without bumps in the road ahead of course, but no walls, fences or mountains any more . . .

When we are sad we tend to want to find the reason, analyze it, and then devise a way to avoid it in the future. We then look to what the future will be like when we do this and it makes us hopeful as we project a desired happiness. Then we create our plan. We fear it may not come true though because the past was sad, therefore so much the future.

When we are happy we want to find the reason, analyze it and then devise a way to sustain it in the future. We then look to what the future will be like when we do this and it makes us hopeful as we project our desired happiness. Then we create our plan. When it starts to unravel we start to reflect and see all our once projected decisions and dreams as mistakes and we begin the cycle of regret.

When we live in the now we focus on the present. We are where we are and there is no point in over analyzing why. In the past we took decisions, we made choices. There is happiness and there is pain. But we are here. We must accept it. We must dare to disturb the universe.

We must ask ourselves only a few questions - Am I happy, fulfilled, satisfied? If yes, then good. If not, then what is missing? What is missing now – not in the future. But find what you need now – don’t force the future on yourself now. It is pointless. And don’t wear the past around your neck like a noose – it is also useless.

If we can figure out how we want to live – values, beliefs – the what, where and with whom we will live will come to us. It will come in amazing ways.

Once many years ago - when I still had plans - I sat with friends in a tavern in Greece one winter’s evening and drank wine by the wood fire. One of the friends – who I did not know very well – began to ask me questions about my plans in life, my dreams. In those days I could answer this question immediately and I did. She then asked me the simplest of questions “And when you achieve that, what next?”. I had an answer for that too. And she repeated her question. This went on and on until I had not only run out of answers for a grossly projected future, but I had become terrified of the void that was my ultimate answer – “I don’t know”.

I had crashed into the reality of the future. I also took something else away from that evening. From all my planning and all my worrying about the future, as well as all my regret and despair at the mistakes of my past – I had been missing the point. I was not living now. Later that night I wept – mourning all the things I had let slip from my hands while looking back or looking ahead and not looking beside me. I wept at my foolishness and shortsightedness and eventually I wept with relief and joy that I had at least now realized the point. It’s all about now – because now is the only place and time we are alive. There is no future. And the past is gone, left us. There is only now. That was the point. So live it.

I still weep frequently  - something which some people find odd. I do try to do it privately - for other people’s sakes more than mine as it makes them uncomfortable – but I weep often. I weep from joy and from sadness – and I find weeping is a very “now” thing.

"Now" doesn’t mean we don’t have pain or joy – it just means we live through it rather than detach it for analysis through the prisms of reflection and projection.

So – this has been a long piece, but it’s been on my mind for a while and stimulated much by conversations and insomnia - a very “now” condition which doesn’t allow any past or future.

“Now” is hard, but it is rewarding.

Dare to disturb the universe. Embrace “Now-ness”.

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Alexander Graham Bell – American inventor of the telephone