I have a little book that I read every night. It is 'Night Light - A Book of Nighttime Meditations' by Amy E Dean. At the end of a usually hectic day, it just helps to centre me before putting my head down. There is a thought or meditation for each day of the year. So last night on May 15th it started with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson ;
We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical fact that I fled from.
I wonder how many of us have done a 'geographical' at some point in our lives? I know that I have. Many years ago, over twenty in fact, I asked my senior partner if I could take a nine month sabbatical to travel round the world. The blessing that I got from him surprised me - but then again he was a maverick and probably wished that he could have done the same.
So I planned my trip and set off. I did want to see the world, but with the benefit of hindsight, I now realise that I was doing a 'geographical'. I was not comfortable in my own skin. Yes, I was doing well in my career - I was a reasonably successful solicitor, a partner in an up and coming practice, but I didn't really like myself too much. I drank too much, I was full of ego and although I liked to think of myself as 'nice old Carl' I didn't really treat people the way that I expected them to treat me. I was overly sensitive, selfish and yet a people pleaser at the same time.
So instead of looking inwards, I looked outwards - a spell away from where I lived and worked, a spell away from those who surrounded me in the town that I lived in and from those with whom I worked, would sort everything out. Of course, it didn't work. I did have an enjoyable time on many levels, but I came back the same me and before long, the same feelings of irritability, restlessness and discontent were upon me again.
What I didn't realise then, and what it was to take me a good deal longer to realise, was that I needed to change from within. I needed to start to change MY behaviours. I could not change other people, so why waste time trying to do so - besides who am I to even try and change someone else. No I had to stop running away and deal with the reasons why I wanted to run in the first place.
Once I started to do that and realise that I was merely a player in this great play of life and was not the director, things started to get better. To this day, and every day, I have to work on a daily basis to make myself more likeable to me, because if I don't like myself (and there is a difference between liking myself and being obsessed with myself) then how can I expect anyone else to think that I am an 'ok' person. I have to be less selfish and to think of others. Sometimes that just means listening to others and seeing that they have a view too! Often, it can be something as simple as making my wife a cup of tea or helping someone that I can see is struggling carrying their shopping. Likewise if I start to get angry or resentful towards someone because of something that they have said or done, I have to look at my part in the situation - besides whilst I am being resentful to someone else, they are just merrily getting on with their life. It's only me that gets hurt. If I have a problem, I have to work through it - discussing it with someone doesn't half help, instead of keeping it in my head alone. I have had to learn, and this has been hard, that I usually grow as a person far more from working my way through a problem or something that frightens me, and coming out the other side, than I do from some great thing that happens to me. Anyone can enjoy the good times.
The best thing that I have learned is that the world is perfect - it is just people that are not, myself included! So by not placing over reliance on people, places and things, I can be as happy and contented as I set my mind to be - sure shit will and does still happen. It's how I deal with it that is important. Strangely enough since I started to adopt this approach to life, things have just got better and better. So I will continue doing what I do on a daily basis - I am not seeking perfection, but merely progress and that suits me just fine.
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