"There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness. Had we been placed on earth by a malign creator for the exclusive purpose of suffering, we would have good reason to congratulate ourselves on our enthusiastic response to the task. Reasons to be inconsolable abound: the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit. In the face of such persistent ills, we might naturally expect that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own extinction."
--Alain de Botton How Proust Can Change Your Life
I have been back home in America for nearly a month now and I must say it was one of the hardest months I've ever had the displeasure to endure. I had to leave Cheung Chau where I lived in a beautiful apartment located on a cliff overlooking the South China Sea, next to lush subtropical greenery, a beach a ten minute walk away, on a island with no cars, a short ferry ride to one of the most cosmopolitan, most advanced cities in the world, the lovely jewel of Asia called Hong Kong. I left the jet setting life style of traveling to several different countries a year. I was having afternoon tea at the Peninsula. I was scuba diving in the south of Thailand. I was seeing live music on the weekends or going out onto the mountains in Sai Kung for a Sunday afternoon hike. This was normal for me. Up until two weeks before my departure, I was completely fine with leaving all this behind and starting up yet another life back in New Jersey, the place I had never, even after four years living in Ohio for college and after another four years in China, stopped considering my home. But then the fear struck. Number one, I was leaving someone that I loved very dearly for the past four years behind in order to start a professional life in America, a life that I'd been planning since the day I stepped onto the plane to go to Asia. Was I doing the right thing? The week before my plane was to leave was so harrowing, I was so grief-stricken, I wept at least five times a day and was in constant emotional agony. The decision to leave was tormenting me inside and out. I showed classic signs of depression - feeling lethargic, not wanting to leave the apartment and having a lack of appetite, being hungry but not really having the desire to put something in my mouth, chew then swallow.
Once I got back home, the pressure on me was compounded by my family situation. My mother has for as long as I've known her has been mentally ill, my brother after he was terminated from his job more than a year ago started showing signs of the same mental illness, my grandmother was put in a nursing home after a stroke eight months ago, my father's finances are terrible with the possibility of losing the house (which is in complete disarray), my aunt was hit by a car and is now being harangued by the hospital for bills topping thousands of dollars, all this while I unsuccessfully looked for a job without any practical education or relevant experience. I didn't know many people in the area anymore either except some old high school friends who had their own lives now so I felt really completely isolated. It was then I looked to getting in touch with my spiritual side and picked up a book by the Dalai Lama called the Art of Happiness. After I finished it, I went to the library and got another book similar in content, and then another until I had almost read all the books on Buddhism in the local library. Since then, and I know this sounds so cliche, I can truly attest that I've become much more in tune with what is important in life.
I feel like this has been some forced spiritual retreat created to test how I would deal with a difficult situation but somehow I think it's worked. I feel like I've had an epiphany of sorts. I now know what my purpose in life is - to be compassionate towards all living things, to serve others and to experience happiness through this.
A few days ago, I went downtown to do some errands and to pick some things up one of which was for my grandmother in the nursing home - a bouquet of flowers which I thought had been missing from her bedside table. Now, I have no money except for a few hundred dollars in the bank and eighty in cash and I'm unemployed. But I was sure I wanted to spend the seven dollars on the flowers. After I cut the stems, placed the bouquet in a vase and set them down, she smiled and told me they looked really pretty. When I left, I caught a glimpse of her looking back at the flowers. Who could have thought that giving something could feel better than receiving?
Every decision I make, every thought I come up with, I try to do with the idea of being compassionate. I don't claim that I always succeed or that I'm always happy. That would mean that I've reached enlightenment which normally takes many lifetimes of rigorous meditation and prayer not a month of reading spirituality books. But I can say I feel more grounded whereas when I was away, I was swept away with the jet setting lifestyle of there always being something to do, somewhere to go or be, pleasurable experiences to take part in and in a way I used to think that this was living. It was fun but it's not necessarily the formula for happiness. I now know what my purpose is in life- to serve others. And if that means that I get trampled on, abused, insulted, embarrassed, pushed, I will not hit back but try to retain my compassion to those whose wish is to harm me. This is my vow for not only the the new year to come but for as long as I remain in this world.
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward people... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your very soul, and your very flesh shall become a great poem." ---Walt Whitman
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Friday, December 08, 2006
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