The Fence-Painting Fortnight of Destiny: A memoir

by Meshel Laurie

  I needed a little extra muscle when it came to certain scenarios, so I bought The Art of Happiness at Work, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. Filled with practical advice on how to deal with jealousy, anger and hostility at work, it changed my life from the first page, and I’ve never dealt with people or workplaces in the same way again.

  Thanks to that book, I started catching myself in that moment before I reacted to drama around me. I physicalised it by closing my mouth and standing still, rather than saying something sarcastic and rolling my eyes as I would’ve liked to do! I meditated for a moment on why that other person might be behaving that way, and what I could do to de-escalate the situation for them and for me. It’s not about submission, let me make that very clear. I never gave in to bullying, but I did stop bullying back, which changes the whole dynamic completely. I stopped fighting fire with fire essentially, and started looking for ways to extinguish it instead. The dharma replaced the shields, which were just about buggered anyway.

  Another great lesson I learnt from the book was to focus on finding a higher purpose in my work. I started looking for charitable angles in things I didn’t want to do, for ways that someone else could benefit from them. It makes it a lot harder to hate an activity when you know that the generous people who run a charity are super-excited about it. It’s important to personalise charitable endeavours, for me anyway, to meet and talk to the people who devote their lives to helping others, and to get my own hands dirty, rather than just sending a tax-deductible cheque. It’s humbling, and helps motivate me to do the small things that mean a lot to others. On more than one occasion I’ve lent my support to a charity that is close to the heart of a person I struggle with at work. It can work wonders in easing tensions in a very genuine way.

  Those simple strategies and many more I was learning about from Eddie and from my reading made a big impact on my work life, in a relatively short period of time. Moreover, I was feeling more relaxed, and even something akin to contentment. I even started to think of myself as ‘lucky’.

  Eddie asked us one morning if we were aware that we were among the luckiest beings to have ever walked the Earth?

  He went on to remind us that we had been born human. Of all the organisms on the planet, all the spineless, mindless possibilities, we’d been born human. We’d survived childhood, which so many around the world still fail to do, and we’d been born with sufficient intellectual capability and access to education that we were able to read and write. We were living in a country that allowed religious freedom, in a time when information flowed (mostly) freely around the world, carrying with it the dharma, the Buddha’s teachings. We were lucky because we had found our way to it.

  It’s hard to ever feel ‘unlucky’ again, once you’ve realised your good luck started at being born human.

  Of course, ‘good luck’ of any kind is just a manifestation of good karma. Ever wondered why some people seem to have all the good luck, while others seem to have none at all? I’d certainly spent my life wondering why some people seemed to get all the breaks, and why I had to go the long way round all the time just to get to the same place they’d landed at so quickly and easily. I believe Karma is my answer. That belief, coupled with my newfound understanding of the great fortune of being human, helped me to see my career in a completely new light. I no longer felt ‘unlucky’ about anything, let alone the fact that I was one of a very small number of Australian performers of any kind who were making a living out of it. I was still ambitious, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t come from a place of envy or conceit anymore. It was all about pushing myself to see how far I could go with this life, without comparing myself to how far along others seemed to be.

  I had the added bonus of focusing on the higher purpose of my work, which in turn gave me opportunities to create good karma for myself. It all appeared before me in a neat, manageable cycle, as life has tended to do since that first day I sat with Eddie.

  Eddie dished out a very good piece of advice about frenemies one day, although he didn’t use that word. He was talking about difficult relationships, giving out Buddhist-flavoured tips on how to deal with them, and a lady in the class kept asking, ‘But what if that doesn’t work?’ and ‘What if that doesn’t work?’

  Finally Eddie asked, ‘Is it possible for you to end your relationship with this person all together?’

  ‘I guess so,’ she shrugged.

  ‘Then end it,’ he said simply.

  We were stunned. Can you just end relationships that make you feel like shit? Can you stop being ‘friends’ with someone you don’t like, and who clearly dislikes you? What about all the people in between? All the history? All the scores to settle?

  My mind was racing, I was frightened, and yet I knew I’d done it before. I’d never glanced back at those girls from preschool, primary school, high school, or uni, the ones I’d been completely wound up in at the time. In those cases, though, I left them behind and moved on. I realised I was like those girls who never drop a boyfriend until they’ve got another one lined up. I’d never given up a frenemy until I was sure I had another one ready to go, and each model had been cooler, smarter, bitchier and more formidable than the last. In every case I’d risen to match her unpleasantness, and in each case I felt a great sense of achievement in being half of an exclusive, acid-tongued team.

  I’d never trusted any of those girls or women, and I hope they hadn’t trusted me because I spent a lot of time bitching to other people about them and divulging their secrets. The friends I did trust and like had always received far less of my time and attention. ‘What kind of person am I?’ I asked myself, right there in the gompa. Was I addicted to proving myself, and to people who treated me like I was never enough?

  So that was a pretty heavy Thursday morning.

  I thought about it over the next few days, then made up my mind to do it—to extricate myself from all frenemy-type relationships and scenarios. It was a hard habit to break and even harder not to fall back into because within a couple of months I was pretty lonely. I missed the ‘exclusivity’ and intensity of those relationships, but not the disturbing emotions, and was so worried about repeating the pattern that I tended away from close, one-on-one friendships for years. I still have moments of wishing I had that go-to person to talk to, that person who knows everything about me, and so never needs a backstory to understand the significance of a new development. Obviously Adrian knows everything about me, but he’s just not interested in chatting for hours about the minutiae of life. (Is any man?)

  According to the dharma, one should endeavour to see all others equally, without favouring some and rejecting others. In fact, Tibetan Buddhism instructs that we should try to feel for every other person in the same way that we feel for our own mothers—assuming we feel love for our own mothers, of course!

  I understand it’s a stretch when you first hear it, and I’m not going to attempt to convince you of its merits here. I will say, however, that personally I was stunned again at the relevance of this ancient teaching in my own life. Since childhood I’d pursued obsessive relationships with some, while actively trying to exclude others. I had to rein my behaviour in at both extremes and find new ways of dealing with life’s ups and downs myself, such as through meditation. It was really hard work, but slowly I started feeling the difference in my anxiety and depression levels. I started feeling peaceful.

  I invested my freed-up frenemy time and energy into forging different kinds of relationships. Relationships that made me feel good about myself—not because I was being flattered or praised, or because I was part of something exclusive, but because these relationships were based on practising compassion and kindness. Just as the dharma promised, these relationships brought me happiness.

  Over the last five years I’ve hung out with human slavery investigators in Cambodia, Aboriginal elders in the Northern Territory, musical therapists in Melbourne, and many very cool people in between. It’s hard to find the w
ords to describe those experiences without sounding like a Celebrity Apprentice contestant. Perhaps there’s too much etiquette around these matters. I was raised to believe that discussing one’s charitable works lessened their authenticity, but every week I’m approached by charities seeking advice and assistance with ‘spreading their message’. I’m often drawn to charities myself by hearing about the experiences other people have had in working with them, so I for one am never judgmental of someone who speaks openly and enthusiastically about their charitable connections. I think a lot of people would like to be involved in helping others, but just don’t know where to start, so the more we share information about who needs what and where, the better! (I have some of that kind of info on my website, www.meshellaurie.com, and I’m always looking for more, so please get in touch if you have something to add.)

  So, on a very deep, fundamental level, I knew that everything I was learning at the dharma centre and through reading and meditation on Buddhist principles was true. I just knew it, like I knew how to breathe. It was like I’d known it before, and was coming back to it, rather than learning it for the first time. I believe that I have studied the dharma before, in a past life, just like I learnt things in past lives that made public speaking easy for me in this life. (I also feel like I can ‘remember’ being very agile and athletic, even though that has never been the case in this lifetime!)

  Learning about the Buddhist philosophy has changed me profoundly as a person, and so much for the better. I’ve certainly achieved more success in my life too. Coincidence? I don’t think so, because I always worked hard and always had the same talents. Somehow, my change of outlook appears to have changed my actual circumstances, and long may it continue I say! Although no easier, it is a very much happier life I live today.

  If you are interested in finding out more, just google Buddhism in your town. We are everywhere!

  HAPPINESS AND ITS CAUSES

  It might’ve been fate, it might’ve been luck, or possibly the power of positive thinking. (I know it wasn’t The Secret, because I tried that back in early 2007 and had one of the worst years of my life!) I don’t know what sparked it, but life certainly started looking up from about mid-2008.

  I was attending some night-time teachings in the gompa, which were conducted by this cheeky chappie, Geshe Tashi Tsering, a Tibetan monk of very high standing. A ‘geshe’ is a monk who has achieved a high level of academic excellence, like a professor in our university system. They are often referred to by their students as Geshe-la, which is an affectionate nickname.

  I’ll never forget the first night I saw Geshe-la in action. There were about a hundred people crammed into the gompa, and suddenly they all leapt to their feet and bowed their heads. I followed suit, but couldn’t resist a peek at the small group of monks who swept into the room. The younger ones peeled off as they reached the front, and lo and behold, the littlest, oldest one climbed up those handpainted wooden steps, and plopped cross-legged onto the cushion on top of the grand chair with the funny napkin hanging overhead. ‘So that’s why Eddie never sat in it,’ I thought to myself as I resumed my seat for the session.

  In what I would come to learn was a pretty normal set-up, Geshe-la would speak mostly in Tibetan, and a younger monk would sit beside, slightly behind, and on a much lower seat, translating his teaching into English. He would chuckle to himself as he told a story, and wait patiently for us to reach the punchline, some minutes after he had, then he’d laugh all over again. This, again, is common. Humour has been a big part of every such teaching I’ve ever attended, including those conducted by the boss himself, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

  His Holiness, to whom I’ll forthwith refer as HH, visited Australia in June 2008. It was his sixth tour of Australia, although the first I’d ever noticed, and was built around a five-day teaching at the Sydney SuperDome, of which I attended three days.

  On the first day, I arrived early and witnessed HH and about twenty monks conducting some sort of ceremony with the altars on the stage. I don’t know how long it had been going before I got there, but I sat and watched for at least an hour, as incense was lit, prayers recited, chants mumbled, and bells and other paraphernalia were waved about. It was not a public event, although no one was prevented from entering. HH was just going about his business in the space he happened to find himself in.

  Eventually the superdome filled to capacity, and the ceremony reached its natural conclusion. At which point, without fanfare, His Holiness climbed to the top of his ornate perch, plopped cross-legged onto the cushion and began talking to a crowd of thousands that ran the gamut from fellow Tibetan refugees, decked out in their most colourful traditional party clothes, to star-struck Western Buddhists like me, to libertarian atheist intellectuals, and everyone in between. HH is nothing if not a showman, and he had something for everyone in that cavernous auditorium.

  There must have been two hundred monks sitting cross-legged on that stage, either side of HH. During one session, a very old monk in the group began coughing quite persistently. His Holiness was speaking in Tibetan by this stage, and his translator Geshe Thupten Jinpa was having to wade through great slabs of information at a time. While he did so, HH moved his microphone to the side and spoke inaudibly to the coughing monk.

  The old man kept coughing, and although there seemed to be no embarrassment about it on his part, it was clearly getting on the nerves of the Dalai Lama. Eventually, after delivering a particularly lengthy chunk for his interpreter to deal with, HH signalled for another monk to bring him his cloth bag. The bag was delivered and HH dove deep inside it, rifling around for a few minutes until he found what he was looking for. He removed half a packet of Soothers (clearly visible in the projection on the giant screen above his head) and artfully piffed it into the lap of the coughing monk. The monk grunted appreciation, took a Soother and held the pack aloft, as if to ask HH if he wanted him to piff it back. HH waved the offer away and picked up his teaching exactly where he’d left off.

  The cough was conquered, but the spectacle of the cough lives on in my mind. It goes to the point HH makes about his own perceived godhood. He is not, as many believe, the reincarnation of Buddha, nor has he ever claimed to be. He famously described himself in an interview with The New York Times as ‘a simple Buddhist monk, no more, no less’.

  To spend time in his company is to see so much of the mysticism and superstition fall away before your eyes. What is left is an outstanding academic, with a profound understanding of the complex teachings of the Buddha, and the humility to deliver those teachings simply.

  I mentioned earlier my fear that ‘being Buddhist’ was a bit beyond me, because there was so much to learn and remember. Well, no one makes Buddhist philosophy easier to understand or more obvious than His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I came away from those teachings more convinced than ever that I was on the right path. I was energised and ready to move forward in my life.

  I’d extricated myself from as many negative relationships as I was able to, and through the application of Buddhist principles, was able to cope much better with those I was stuck with. I’d created a kind of vacuum, and was amazed at the quality of people who filled it. I got a new boss, by the name of Ryan Rathbone, who was all of 26 and often skateboarded to work. What a beautiful kid. He really stood up for me, in a number of situations that many older and more experienced execs had skilfully sidestepped. He allowed my producer Halina Baczkowski and I to make a series of Sunday-night radio specials about topical issues like suicide, crystal meth use and bullying. Pretty heavy stuff for a Brisbane FM radio station, but he was right on board with my pursuing the higher calling of my work and helped in any way he could.

  I was starting to pop up on TV again, doing guest spots here and there. I remember feeling really different about things, even though I was in the same places, doing the same stuff, with the same people I had been for years.

  It all just felt really different. Really ‘light’, really ‘real’.


  I decided it was really time to talk baby.

  WHERE BABIES COME FROM

  I remember the exact moment my children were conceived. It was a brief encounter with three lovely men, whose names I didn’t catch, while my husband was smoking downstairs.

  As far as IVF experiences go, mine was pretty perfect in all the ways that matter. There was one false start, which resulted in no eggs to harvest (that is the actual terminology they use), and the discovery of a massive cyst that was strangling my right ovary (sorry). Everyone was amazed I’d never felt any discomfort from the cyst, but that’s me down to the ground, you see. I’ve always felt like my body was just the thing that carried my brain around. You’d be amazed how little I can notice about it.

  Anyway, second try was a charm. I started off with those daily injections into my stomach, which never bothered me a bit. I don’t have an aversion to needles, and in any case, the shots are delivered through one of those pens that diabetics use, which neither look nor act like a syringe—so if that’s holding you back, don’t let it.

  After a month or so of that stuff, it’s back to the doctor for an ultrasound to determine if you have produced a crop of eggs for them to get in and harvest. I’d produced six, which is pretty good by all accounts. I seem to recall someone saying that ten or twelve was excellent, but six gave us room to move.

  It had been a long journey to that point, as it generally is by the time you get to IVF. I’d been hoping to fall pregnant naturally for ten years, although obviously I’d realised it was highly unlikely after three or four of those years. Two of my three ‘mad aunties’ had never been able to have children, and the burden of their sadness was borne by everyone in the family. Even as a little girl I knew the importance of my affection towards them. We kids were always seated with them at events, and instructed to make a big fuss over the gifts they gave us. ‘It’s such a shame they could never have kids of their own,’ my Mum would always say on the drive home. Oh how I worried I’d end up just like them.