“When I was young, I had a friend who adored her cat; she used to say that she could see in his eyes that he supported her in all circumstances. Her parents were strict and cold. When she was upset, they were not the sort to console her. So she went to see her cat, stroked him, and told him about her misfortunes. As he purred, he looked her in the eye, a deep, kindly look, and gave her back her self-confidence.
“It’s very possible. An animal often has an unconditional love for its master, and that love can carry a person a long way. You know, people are beginning to do scientific research into love, and extraordinary things are being found out. In an American university, scientists growing cancer cells in a Petri dish had the idea of bringing students into their lab—in the United States, students are often used as guinea pigs. They stood them around the dish and asked them to ‘send love’ to the cancer cells. The students did it, and the researchers scientifically measured that the cancer cells regressed. They were incapable of explaining the phenomenon, just as they couldn’t say how, concretely, the students managed to send love, but the result was there, indisputable: the cells regressed.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yes, love no doubt has numerous effects that we are scarcely beginning to discover. But most scientists don’t like this sort of experiment, because they hate bringing to light phenomena they are not capable of explaining. Put yourself in their place: you must admit, it’s frustrating.
“Now that I am near the end of my life, I find myself convinced that love is the solution to most problems human beings encounter. It may seem a simple, conventional idea, and yet practically nobody applies it, because it’s often difficult to love.
“Let’s say there are people you really don’t feel like loving. I even get the impression sometimes some people do all they can not to be loved!
“Some are nasty because they don’t love themselves. Others are annoying because they have suffered a lot and want to make the whole planet pay for it. Some have been taken in by people and believe they are protecting themselves with an unpleasant attitude. Some have been so disappointed by others that they have closed their hearts, saying they would not be disappointed in the future if they no longer expected anything from others. Others are egotistical because they are convinced everyone is, and they think they will be happier if they push in front of others. The point all these people have in common is that, if you love them, you surprise them, because they are not expecting it. Most of them, what’s more, will refuse to believe it to start with, it seems so abnormal. But if you persevere and demonstrate it to them, for example by unselfish acts, it can change their way of seeing the world and, by extension, their relation with you.”
“I can accept that, but it’s not easy to reach out to people like that and have positive feelings about them.”
“It’s easier if you know that another point these people have in common is that there is still a positive intention behind each of their acts. They believe what they are doing is the best thing, even the only thing possible. That’s why, even if what they do can be criticized, what motivates their behavior is often understandable.
“You know, love is the best way of obtaining a change in people. If you go toward someone blaming him for what he did, you push him into hardening his position and not listening to your arguments. Feeling rejected, he will reject your ideas. If, on the other hand, you go toward him convinced that, even if what he did or said is disastrous, he is, deep down, someone good, who had a positive intention when he did it, you make him relax and open himself to what you want to say to him. It’s the only way to give him a chance to change.”
“It reminds me of a story I heard on the radio, a few years ago,” I said. “It was in France. A woman had been followed home by a serial rapist. She had barely opened the door when he rushed her and locked himself in the apartment with her. He was armed and, having nothing to defend herself with and not being able to shout because of the threat of his weapon, she just started talking to him. She forced the conversation, trying in vain to get him to speak. She said that this destabilized him a bit, because he was not expecting such an attitude from his victim. She carried on talking, asking questions and giving answers, hiding as best she could the terror that was taking hold of her. At one point, desperately, she had a random thought and said, ‘But I don’t understand why you are doing things like this when you are a good person.’ She told the journalists, afterward, that her aggressor had then started to sob, and had told her, in tears, about his lousy life, while she tried to listen to him and continue to hide her terror. In the end, she got him to go away of his own accord.”
“You are giving an extreme case, but it is true that people tend to behave in the way we see them, to identify with what we perceive in them. You must understand that each of us has qualities and defects; what we concentrate our attention on tends to grow, to spread. If you turn the spotlight on someone’s good qualities, even if they are minute, they will be emphasized, will develop until they dominate. Hence the importance of having people close to you who believe in you.”
16
“IS THERE ANOTHER aspect of the plan that is holding you back, where you don’t feel quite in agreement with yourself when you imagine yourself carrying it out?” he asked.
“Yes, there is one last point.”
“What’s that?”
“In my dream, I earned money, enough in any case to be able to buy myself a house with a garden, and, in fact, I’m not completely comfortable with that idea. I’m not sure whether I’m cut out to earn money, nor, deep down, whether I really want to. In short, there’s something bugging me about this.”
“We’ve gotten there!”
“Sorry?”
“I knew we’d get to this point sooner or later.”
“Why?”
“Money crystallizes all our fantasies, our projections, fears, hatreds, jealousies, our inferiority complexes, our superiority complexes, and many other things as well. It would have been astonishing if we didn’t have to tackle it together.”
“I didn’t know such a little word hid so many things!”
“Come on, tell me everything. What is your worry about money?”
He kept his kindly tone, but I could make out an added tone of amusement, as if he had already explored the question so much that he was absolutely not expecting to be surprised by anything I was about to lay before him, whatever it was.
“Let’s say I’m of two minds on the question. It’s as if part of me wanted to earn money and another part didn’t, thought it was contaminated.”
“So the question is how to reconcile the two parts of you, isn’t it?”
“It’s amusing to put it like that, but you could say that, it’s true.”
“So, to start with, tell me what the part of you that wants to earn money wants.”
“I think money might give me a certain freedom. I feel that the richer you are, the less you depend on others. As a result, you become free with your time, with your activities—you don’t owe anyone explanations.”
“There’s some truth in that. What else?”
“Well, I want to make sure I have a certain material comfort. I’m foolish enough to think that it is easier to be happy in a lovely, peaceful house than in a run-down studio apartment in a noisy, polluted neighborhood.”
“There is no harm in seeking material comfort, and it is true that it can make things easier. To be more precise, material comfort doesn’t bring happiness; on the other hand, its absence can sometimes spoil happiness.”
“That seems obvious to me.”
“Yet I must emphasize that material things cannot bring happiness. Many people agree with that idea, and sometimes even assert it loud and clear, and yet, deep down, unconsciously, they still believe it would make them happy. So they denounce the behavior of those who flaunt their wealth, but this denunciation is in reality tainted with jealousy because a part of them is envious and thinks the wealthy are happier than th
ey are. This belief is widespread, including among those who state the contrary.”
“Yes, that’s possible.”
I recalled one of my friends, who so violently criticized the rich and those who only thought of material things that it seemed fishy. Her lack of indifference toward them no doubt betrayed a particular echo that their money produced in her and which was, perhaps, not harmless.
“In fact, it’s the belief itself that makes you unhappy, since it impels people to an endless race. You desire an object, a car, an article of clothing, or whatever, and you begin to believe that possessing that object will satisfy you. You desire it, you want it, and, in the end, if you get it, you forget it very quickly and set your sights on something else that will, of course, satisfy you if you get it. There is no end to this quest. People don’t realize that if they drove a Ferrari, lived in a Beverly Hills apartment, and traveled by private jet, they would be convinced that it was the yacht they didn’t yet own that would make them happy. Of course, people who are nowhere near being able to drive a Ferrari are annoyed and tell themselves they would be happy just to be a bit richer than they are. They’re not asking for a mansion in Beverly Hills, just a slightly larger apartment, and they are convinced that would be enough and they wouldn’t want anything else afterward. That’s where they’re wrong. Whatever the material level you aspire to, you desire more when you reach it. It’s really an endless race.”
His words resonated with me, because they reminded me of childhood Christmases. I would be all excited preparing my letter to Santa Claus, preparing the list of toys I wanted. For weeks I would think about it, impatiently waiting for the day when I would finally possess them. My excitement reached a peak on Christmas Eve: I couldn’t take my eyes off the tree, underneath which I already imagined my happiness the next day. When I went to bed, the night ahead seemed interminable, and I was grateful to see the time on my alarm clock at first light. The big day had finally arrived! When I opened the living room door and saw the multicolored parcels under the lit-up tree, I was filled with an intense joy. I unwrapped everything, breathless with excitement, then spent most of the day playing with what I had been given, making sure I avoided the long family meal, leaving the adults to their boring conversations. But I remember that, as evening came, as the sun went down, my joy progressively dried up. Already, my new toys no longer generated the same rush of pleasure. I would even find myself wishing for the excitement of the day before. I would have liked to relive that. I remember telling myself one year that my dreams of toys made me happier than the toys themselves. Waiting was more pleasurable than the outcome.
I told the sage about this, who said with a smile, “The parents’ biggest lie to their children is not about Santa Claus. It’s the tacit promise that his presents will make them happy.”
I again looked at the workers in the valley and wondered if their traditions also led them, once a year, to try to bring happiness to their children by showering them with material presents.
“You have told me,” he went on, “what motivates the part of you that wants to earn money. Tell me now about the part of you that rejects the idea.”
“I think money in itself disgusts me a little. I sometimes feel that it is all that counts in this world, that money becomes the center of people’s concerns.”
“Things are going off course a little, it’s true, and it’s a pity because money is a fine invention.”
“Why do you say that?”
“We often forget that, originally, money was no more than a means of making exchanges between human beings easier: exchanges of goods, but also of skills, services, advice. Before money, there was barter. A person who needed something was forced to find someone who was interested in what he had to offer in exchange. Not easy. The creation of money allowed the evaluation of each object, each service, and the money collected by the seller then gave him the chance to acquire other goods and services. There is no harm in that. In a way, you could even say that the more money circulates, the more exchanges there are between human beings, and the better it is.”
“Looked at like that, it’s amazing!”
“That’s how it should be: offering up what you are capable of—the fruit of your labor, your skills—and obtaining in exchange the wherewithal to acquire what others can do and you can’t. Besides, money is not something that should be accumulated, but used. If everyone started from this principle, unemployment would not exist, because there are no limits to the services that human beings can render each other. It would be enough to favor people’s creativity and encourage them to realize their ideas.”
“So why has money become something dirty nowadays?”
“To understand that, you must first grasp two elements: how money is earned and how it is spent. Money is healthy if it comes from the employment of our skills, giving the best of ourselves. In this way, it gives real satisfaction to the person who earns it. But if it is obtained by abusing others—for example, your customers or your co-workers—then it generates what we could call symbolically a negative energy; shamans call it hucha. And this hucha pulls everyone down, pollutes minds and, in the end, makes both despoiled and despoiler unhappy. The despoiler may well feel that he has won something, but he builds up in himself the hucha that will increasingly prevent him from being happy. You can see it in the face when people get old, no matter the wealth accumulated. While the man who earns money by giving the best of himself and respecting others can blossom as he gets rich.”
I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s incredible novel about a malevolent man whose malevolent acts are written on the face of his portrait instead of his own face. Over time, the portrait is marked more and more, until it becomes hideous.
“You said too that the way you spend money is important.”
“Yes, if you use the money you earn to give others the possibility of expressing their talents, their skills, by calling on their services, then money produces positive energy. On the other hand, if you satisfy yourself with accumulating material goods, then life is emptied of its meaning. You dry out little by little. Look around you: people who have spent their lives accumulating without giving anything are disconnected from others. They no longer have any real human relationships. They are no longer capable of taking a sincere interest in a person, or of loving. And, believe me, when you reach that stage, you’re not happy!”
“It’s strange, when I think of it: I’m at the other end of the world, I meet a spiritual master, and we talk about money!”
“In fact, we’re not really talking about money.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re talking about the limits you set in life. Money is only a metaphor for your potential.”
I was swinging my legs over the void and looking at the immense space open before me. The slight warm breeze continued to tease my nostrils with aerial scents and murmur its secrets in my ears.
“In the end, perhaps I earn enough money today, and it’s not necessary to have more. But, tell me, since you are so comfortable about money, how come you’re not filthy rich?”
He smiled, before answering, “Because I don’t need it.”
“So, why are you helping me to be more comfortable about earning money?”
“Because perhaps you need to earn some before you can detach yourself from it.”
“And suppose I were already detached?”
After a short silence, he said, “It’s not detachment; it’s renunciation.”
His words echoed in me, and the impression of the echo of his voice carried on vibrating.
I had to admit that, once again, he was right.
“In Hindu philosophy,” he went on, “it is thought that earning money is a valuable goal, and it corresponds to one of the phases of life. You must just avoid getting stuck in it, and then know how to evolve toward something else to make a success of your life.”
“What’s a successful life?” I asked, f
eeling a little naive.
“A successful life is a life that you have led in accordance with your wishes, giving the best of yourself in what you do, staying in harmony with who you are, and, if possible, a life that has given us the chance to go beyond yourself, to devote yourself to something other than yourself and to bring something to mankind, even very humbly, even if it’s tiny. A little bird’s feather thrown to the wind. A smile for other people.”
“That presupposes you know your wishes.”
“Yes.”
“And how can you know if you are acting in accord with your values?”
“By being on the lookout for what you feel. If what you are doing does not respect your values, you will experience a certain discomfort, a slight malaise, or a feeling of guilt. It’s a sign that you must ask yourself if your actions are in conflict with what is important for you. You can also ask yourself, at the end of a day, if you are proud of what you have accomplished. It’s very important: we can’t develop as human beings, or even simply stay in good health, when we are doing things that violate our values.”
“It’s funny that you should make a link with health, because I remember when I was a student, I did a summer job as a telemarketing representative for an insurance company. I had to call people to advise them to take out a certain policy. The company knew that three-quarters of the people contacted already had this coverage without knowing it, among the services included with their credit card. But we were absolutely not to mention this, and we were to offer the coverage to everyone. That summer, for the first time in my life, I had a dreadful attack of eczema. The doctor never managed to identify the cause of it, and the prescribed medicine changed nothing; I stopped taking it. The eczema continued to develop, and in the end, I stopped the work because I was ashamed to turn up at the office in that state. A week after I quit, it had all gone.”
The Man Who Wanted to Be Happy Page 9