Fourth Form of Madness

I haven’t been my most upbeat, positive self lately.  The natural flow of life has found me at this point, low in energy, low in “oomph” with a vague nagging question of “what’s it all about?” and “what I am doing here?”.  These are good times.  Good times to reflect and contemplate and accept.  To sit comfortably in myself as these thoughts and feelings pass through me, like a cloud in the sky (okay so this bit isn’t as easy as the sentence I just wrote but the intention is there :-)).

In an effort to lift my sometimes sombre mood, I have been reading lots of positive pieces of writing (that is except my new philosophy unit material – that I can’t even understand at present so I am unclear whether it is positive or negative – so I am filing that under vaguely annoying for the moment – but that’s another blog).  One positive piece I came across listed the 10 things that happy, successful people never do (okay put aside for a moment that it is nearly impossible to define happy and successful and let yourself enjoy the list :-)).  One thing that these supposed happy and successful people never do is “ignore strangers”.  Yes ignore strangers.

I found this intriguing.  What do these happy and successful people do all day then – smile and greet every person they come across like a long lost friend.  Exhaust themselves from a continual day of smiling and greeting and acknowledging everything in their external world.  Really….when do they find time to sink back into themselves, turn down the volume switch of the world and just retreat back into their own being?  So with some misgiving I took it upon myself to experience a bit of this engaging with the whole world positivity, for living is an experience and an experiment :-).

I started off slow, a smile here and there to a fellow wearily train commuter like myself.  By mid week, I had my “regulars” to smile at and nod to when getting on the morning and off the evening train.  I gotta say this did make me feel rather more connected than starting at my iPod or book the whole entire journey in and out each day.  It was nice to see regular faces and share a moment.  Then I extended to random chats on the train platform, nothing earth shattering just the usual “oh it is cold, rainy etc” with a “brrrr” added for effects.

The pinnacle of my week came when I was demonstrating how to use the parking ticket machine at the train station to a dreadlocked youth (okay he was probably 25 but anyone under 30 these days seems young to me).  I was getting so into my spiel that I didn’t notice that the machine had actually spat out 3 tickets.  So I gave one of the tickets on the house to the stressed out dreadlocked child and he ran off all happy to his car.  I gave the other ticket  to a lady about to tackle the same stubborn parking ticket machine and her joy at receiving a $2 ticket for free was contagious and I did feel genuine joy at being able to make someone else’s day just that  little bit easier with such a simple act.

So there I was in my new found jolliness, getting off the train in the city to walk across the road to my work, when it starts to rain. Not just rain but pour.  And of course I don’t have an umbrella.  I seem to suffer from some sort of odd denial about it  ever raining in my home town.  As a result of this denial I have never really ever invested in a brolley despite being caught in some pretty impressive down pours in my time.  So there I am getting bathed in torrential down pour and I look around me at my fellow travellers waiting at the lights to cross the road.  I see a swarm of brollies.  Not just small, one person sea of umbrellas but monster umbrellas that could have doubled as beach umbrellas.  There was plenty of room under each of the brollies but not one of them offered to shelter me from the rain.  I guess they hadn’t been reading the same positive stories about not ignoring strangers as a pathway to happiness and success :-).  So there I stood drowning in a sea of brollies.

But in that moment, as I stood looking around me, drowning in a sea of brollies, I really did connect with so called not ignoring strangers action.  I actually saw the link between evoking and practising this in one’s life, and how this could help to emulate a connection to others and nature sharing with others, as if they were simply an extension of yourself, not the “other” so to speak.  In one moment, I saw all the other abhorrent things we do to each other in this world, as a result of a larger  apathetic disinterest in other people’s plights, other people that we have easily labelled the “stranger”.  If you see someone as a stranger, as different it is easier to walk on by without feeling a moral obligation to check in with someone else’s plight, to even decline from simply offering another shelter from a storm.  However, this becomes much harder when the “other” becomes an extension of yourself, when they are no longer  the “stranger”.

Umm maybe that 10 things happy and successful people never do list really did have some wisdom to it.  So as I trudged my sad and sorry drenched soul to work I make a mental note to check out the other material on the list and allow myself to experiment a little with these other items, just for the sheer experience of it.