I'm Rich!

So I'm on the C-train the other day. I see an ad that says something like "Offer your seat to someone who needs it more than you. We want everyone to enjoy their ride." The C-train is Calgary's sort of subway system and I don't know that I have ENJOYED a ride on it ever. It's not like I'm at home with time on my hands thinking, "Maybe I'll go for a ride on the C-train to get some enjoyment!" Then I hear the announcement, "Thank you for choosing Calgary Transit." I look around me and see a lady talking loudly on her cell phone, "PLEASE don't allow him access to my child! I don't EVER want him to see my child again!" I see a group of natives passing around a bottle of Listerine. One of them stands up, takes off his t-shirt and manages to put on another one without staggering too much or falling over. Then one of his buddies starts wrestling with him. They don't run into me or any of the other passengers fake ignoring them but get close enough a few times so that we can smell their mediciny-fresh breath. At my stop the Transit Peace Officers board the train and kick the whole group off as the combatants shout accusations of racism against their proud culture. Believe me, if there were other options I probably wouldn't have "chosen" Calgary Transit.

Then I read a post on facebook about a psychologist in a classroom who shows the class a glass of water that is roughly half full/empty. The class is expecting the half empty or half full question but instead she asks how heavy the glass of water is. She gets a few answers then explains that it depends how long I hold it. Then she says if I held it for an hour my arm would get sore. If I held it for the whole day my arms would get numb and paralyzed. Same with stress. If you hold on to your stress all day you will feel paralyzed and unable to do anything about it. We must remember to put the glass down.

I sent a comment back to the facebook poster something like, "Yeah but the glass isn't going away. It'll still be there later. It ain't putting itself into the dishwasher. Also if you hold it for a really long time and don't let it get you down, the water will eventually evaporate."

My point, although it wasn't understood by the facebook poster, was ignoring stress and acting as if it's not there seems to be a pretty common behaviour. Our culture of psychology experts who got their degrees from Oprah and Dr. Phil will even TELL you it works. Does it? It doesn't work for me.

"Life IS pain! Anyone who tells you different is selling something." A quote from the imminently quotable movie, The Princess Bride. It's very Zen. Really! The Buddhists have a more realistic view of things. I have expressed it here before but it bears repeating. Life is suffering. Our goal should be to take joy in the suffering of life. It's about the hardest thing in the world to do. I guess that's where reincarnation comes in. Lots of people believe it can take 100 lifetimes to reach enlightenment or Nirvana. The state of being in which one has an imperturbable stillness of mind free from the suffering that comes from desire, aversion and delusion. So back to that glass of water, we should actually try to ENJOY carrying it around! Try to find some positives in it like for example, "Well I'm not thirsty now but if I get thirsty in a few hours, hey, I'll have this partial glass of water to drink! Life is good!" Yeah, like I said, probably the hardest thing in the world to do. But to me it's more genuine than trying to convince yourself and others that that glass over there, it's not there!

Now there are those who will make the point that if we own our suffering we won't be very much fun to be around. Talking about our problems all the time brings others down. Nobody is more guilty of this than I! I'm a complainer. I find it helps me in the process of trying to ease the suffering of life. Still haven't mastered turning the suffering into joy but I'm working on it, I'm working on it! If you think about it the pessimistic attitude has its advantages. There are no bad surprises, only good ones! If something bad happens, you expected it and if something good happens it's a nice unexpected surprise! Life is good! cough cough

Really, our culture has an awful lot to be joyful about. Recently I heard someone say that a billion people on this planet have nothing. They can't go to a tap an just turn it on and get cold, drinkable water. Or hot water to wash with. They can't eat whatever they want, drive anywhere they want, turn on the heat when they're cold or the air when they're hot. Our society should be the happiest on the Earth! Are we? I just don't see it.

The other day a lady came to the front desk at work where I was posted and ordered me to turn on the air conditioning where she was working. She was livid! And even though it wasn't me who turned off her air, she was gonna rattle someone's cage by golly! She took my name and called the head office of the company I work for presumably to get me fired. I don't know her at all but I bet she is one of these people who "act as if." Smile and it will release endorphins in your brain that fool you into believing you are actually smiling for some reason. Well this may be scientific and all but when I am really stressed, like when I was trying to de-escalate things with this lady, I sometimes grit my teeth and widen my lips into a face that looks a lot like a smile. Where are the endorphins THEN? Huh?

I am finding this a lot since returning to Canada. Folks here can become morally outraged at the drop of a hat! There are a lot of people at my workplace who find Canadians hilarious when they get all worked up over some small tragedy. The cleaning staff are almost all Filipino and Raffi, one of them, said to me one time that he misses the Philippines. He said that people in Canada say hello and ask how you are all the time but they don't seem to really care. Sometimes they don't even hang around and wait for an answer to "how are you?" Frankie, a co-worker from Cameroon told me a couple days ago that he knows almost everything about everyone within a kilometer radius of where he lived in Cameroon. How old they are, what the kids are studying, their hopes, their fears, their brand of toothpaste... He told me it's actually rude to meet a stranger and NOT ask how they are doing and talk to them! Here in Calgary he doesn't even know his next door neighbour. I told him that it's different in the country. Calgary USED to be like that when I lived here 15-20 years ago but it's more like a big city now. Everybody is here for one reason: to make money. But in the country people are more community-minded. They work together. The guy three doors down cuts my hay. I get eggs from the neighbour to the left and the neighbour on the right smokes my fish for me. I sell my hay to the family across the road who have horses. I said to Frankie that I figured it was like that in every country I've been to. That's why on my vacations I never stuck to the resort towns, (which are often like the cities), or the cities. I hated Manila, Bangkok, Seoul, and major cities like that, but go to the country and people are really friendly. THOSE, I reckon, are the REAL people of the countries.

Now scroll up to the definition I wrote of Nirvana. Desire, aversion and delusion. People come to the city to make their fortunes. They DESIRE money and possessions. Working life and the stressful rat race become AVERSIONS. Nobody really likes going to work as anyone can see on the early morning C-train if you look around. There are all kinds of people wearing work boots, uniforms, and suits, sipping from half empty/full cups of Tim Horton's coffee that are very much like the aforementioned glass. And the DELUSION is that they will someday GET all the possessions they want and be satisfied and happy with them. Trying to delude ones self further into believing all those stressors aren't there, do you suppose that might be why we have all this fake politeness all over the place, but somebody takes a little bit too long at a traffic light costing you a few seconds in your daily commute to work and holy jumpin' jackrabbits Canadians can go bat shit crazy!

The other day I was doing a patrol. I was in a stairwell going into one of the floors on my patrol and saw a lady about half a flight of stairs away. I was doing my patrol. My work. And she might not be going on to this floor anyway. So I didn't stop, wait for her and hold the door open. As the door was swinging shut I heard, "Thanks a LOT, jerk!" I probably should have stopped and asked her if she was going to the same floor as I was. And she probably shouldn't have been so upset that I didn't. This situation is absolutely hilarious to people from poorer countries where folks still act like their country is a group of people, not a business. I read on my friend Heather's facebook post that there are enough vacant houses in the U.S. for every homeless person to have SIX. Doesn't sound to me like people caring for their fellow Americans. Sounds like if you don't have rent, sleep on the street for all I care.

I guess it comes down to something I have been trying really hard to do since returning to Canada: appreciating what I have. We should all do that a lot more often than we do! With Thanksgiving coming up in Canada, a holiday FOR doing this that unfortunately becomes a festival of stress about travel, making sure the turkey dinner is just right, who is that relative who showed up unannounced, why won't someone get up from sitting on their ass watching football and help me with this mountain of dishes, turkey is HOW much a pound, and so on... we should all really try to be thankful shouldn't we? I got a brand new computer! To a billion people on the earth, that's just a fantasy! It's raining outside and I'm warm and dry. I am going to eat some bacon and eggs soon, something I couldn't do easily even in a rich country like South Korea. I am going to watch the beginning of hockey season later on cable TV. I will have a few of the fantastic beer we have in Canada whilst I watch. I am in a dozen hockey pools with friends from all over the world and that makes watching hockey even MORE fun. I don't have to work today. I'll take a warm shower, go get some cash from my bank account for rent and still have money left in it, pay my reasonable rent, and probably buy some groceries from Safeway where they have massive selections of everything at 10% off on the first Tuesday of every month. The list of blessings goes on and on for me. Life IS good!

But because of another phenomenon I have blogged about in the past, something called "hedonic adaptation", Frankie, who is making LOADS of cash here in Canada, is STILL not happy with what he has and says he wants more. "Someday I'll be rich," he said to me. I bet there are many people in that one kilometer radius he mentioned who would think he already IS. And I can't seem to keep in mind that I am rich too. I have my problems but most of them are created by the job and the lifestyle that I have chosen to keep me as wealthy as I am. So I really have no reason to NOT take joy in my suffering. Most of us don't.

Leastaways, that's what I reckon.