I have just finished reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig it is a beautiful iteration of the understanding that we are always exactly where we are supposed to be with a little of; there’s no place like home. A similarly lovely book is The Five People We Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom which details the stories of an unappreciated life that was also exactly what it should have been and in fact the main character had saved many lives with his presence, he was however a curmudgeon and could not see the value he brought. These are perfect examples of the quote from Henry David Thoreau (also referenced in The Midnight Library) that “it is not what you are looking at but what you see”.
Another treasured book is Mans Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl a concentration camp survivor who saw the harshest realities of life and war and survival and even there some people chose to see the best possibilities. They chose to look after those that they could, sharing their scraps of food or checking in on fellow inmates. This allowed Viktor Frankl to see the best of humanity at the worst of times and find meaning there. Another voice from the concentration camps is Edith Eger who saw a different experience for herself than the one she was having, she elevated herself from the horrors of her existence at that time to see hope and beauty. Her courage is astounding and her story as told in her book The Choice is truly inspiring. These two survivors have a lived experience of seeing the best, arguably through evil and it changed them.
The film Everything Everywhere All At Once has a similar vein of looking through various timelines to find the perfect one for a specific end only to find that the first seemingly clumsy and half lived life was indeed the best and while everything matters, simultaneously, nothing matters and we are here for only a short time. I have long told my children that only people matter, not things or perhaps even careers in the end. While having dinner with friends recently a more recent addition to our friend group commented as she looked around at us laughing about old stories and capers “you’ve all known each other a really long time haven’t you”. It was a statement not a question and as the stories continued and I pulled up photos from twenty years ago on my phone I reflected that at no point did any of us remark on what job we had twenty or even thirty years ago. We didn’t talk about work now or then as we relived a few adventures from parties and festivals back in the day. So it is I am blessed to be able to talk about my many exploits with many friends and we never really talk about our crappy jobs or overtime. I remember well when one of my friends was a nanny for a difficult family and another had a bookshop and went bankrupt. I remember yet another friend with a failed attempt at running a restaurant and indeed my own coffee shop debacle. These, what might be considered failures, are not what I see when looking back through the years, although I could focus on those events if I chose. Instead I see laughter, joy, happiness, grief when one of us has left us prematurely, but so much fun and love and gratitude. I am so grateful for these faithful souls and my beautiful life. Its not what I look at, its what I see.
Having been raised a catholic, something I deeply rejected for many years, I have long been considering the ideas of God having a plan for us versus our apparent free will. In many discussions during RE lessons this debate would come up with the question; how can both things be true? If there is a plan for us and our lives are set out how can we also have free will? It has taken a decade of me studying, practicing and teaching the spiritual practices of the Peruvian Andes to really understand that my perspective of my environment is what creates it. Now I wonder if that is exactly what free will is…… is it the knowing that in every situation I am free to interpret it with love and detachment? That I can see someone might be trying to hurt me and not be hurt. Or I can see someone is hurting and know that they don’t mean to hurt me. Is free will always taking responsibility for our own feelings at all time? I think that might be the interpretation I will use for myself anyway.
Other teachers and authors like Byron Katie or Heather Ash Amara have books and workshops asking readers and attendees to really search their souls to find out whether they are taking things personally or are creating a story that is not actually there. Going further into esoterica we can find Esther Hicks who channels a group of beings collectively called Abraham. Whenever talking to groups Hicks always starts with the idea that we are on the leading edge of creation and we can create whatever we can conceive. Hicks channels the idea of a vortex or what I would call an upward spiral, essentially the same thing. Whatever you can see in your vortex and be grateful for can then come to be in your life, it has to arrive as long as you can really see it and have genuine gratitude. We are moving into the ideas of manifesting now which I am not wholly against but I do believe you need to be proactive in calling what you want into your life. Actions need to be taken not just observed in the minds eye while reclining on the sofa.
Then we have the double slit experiment first created by scientists in 1801 for looking at energy and waves. More recently it has been created with light and when observed the energy becomes photons which have mass. When observed energy becomes matter, so when we are looking at a physical object we are co-creating it. According to the principles of animism and shamanism it is also observing itself, which is why it continues to exist after we have stopped looking at it. That is a metaphysical discussion for another day. The realisation I had while pottering around observing the beautiful English countryside in Spring is that the same lesson comes from different corners of life, fiction, historical memories, art, religion, spirituality, esoterica and even science all predict what we also call “confirmation bias”, we see what we expect to see. I can also agree that I have learned this lesson for myself. It has taken me over ten years and many hours, weeks, months even of rumination to get there but I did.
Choosing to see the magic of the world and the generosity of people does not mean I have made myself blind to the pain and suffering in the world. It is rather a personal choice when dealing with people and circumstance that I look for the best possible motives and hold myself accountable for how I feel in any interactions. Again I am not referring to grief or other genuine reasons to be sad when we need to feel those emotions. When my feelings are hurt, it is me who hurts my own feelings. Someone else cannot hurt my feelings through their actions, it is I who attach a story to the actions that hurts my feelings. If I am offended it is because I choose to be at this point. This was not always the case as I had packed down difficult feelings to avoid feeling them, thus when someone inadvertently triggered a return of these blocked emotions I would construe that they had hurt me. In fact it was my refusal to process those emotions and my albeit subconscious decision to pack them away from my day to day existence that meant I had no control over my nervous system when someone else inadvertently brought them up. I hurt my own feelings, I saw what I wanted to see, that someone else, instead of me was responsible for how I felt.
This is perhaps the toughest message to understand, that we are all responsible for our own feelings at all times. It is also not a particularly spiritual / bleeding heart liberal stance either. In a world of trigger warnings and compelled speech, it seems governments are now expected to regulate our emotions ahead of time for us. What we are exposed to is regulated so that we never have to hear a word or idea that might be a trigger to an old wound we have packed away and tried to avoid forever. It is then a radical idea that we all have to be responsible for our own emotions. There are exceptions of course, it is a learning curve this responsibility, one that has taken me ten years to get through. Many people are traumatised or neurodivergent and need co regulation from other people to learn how to be calm and calm themselves and difficult things happen every day that we need to process. Being responsible does not mean that we don’t feel pain.
It may sound like a new radical idea but in fact these are old ideas, as old as writing itself and many philosophers and religious figures have taught this responsibility. Acceptance of ‘what is’, clear communication of expectations and boundaries, not attaching our own stories to events and ultimately responsibility for our feelings are part of Stoicism, Buddhism, Taoism and Mysticism to name a few. Thankfully for me this understanding is also part of the teachings of the Q’ero people and other traditions of the Peruvian Andes which is the practice I have studied. This continues to be a practice and I am not always perfect at it but I look for the best, the highest good in people, the beauty of the world and the best of intentions and I can honestly say that is what I see and when I see this I see how breathtaking beautiful our world is.
