How Selfish Do You Think You Need to Be in a Marriage?

And they lived happily ever after. What a wonderful ending for childhood stories. I used to close the book with a smile full of anticipation and naiveté. After many years of taking the face value of these stories, I finally understood their deeper meaning.

Why did the princess and not the daughter of the witch win the heart of the prince?

Well, yes, everybody, especially children need to hear about happy endings. But if we take a closer look at the true nature of the character of the princess, she is the embodiment of kindness, altruism, and compassion. In exchange, the daughter of the witch is mean and selfish.

Passion and the initial love may change over time. As Mark Twain said in his Notebook 1894, “No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century …”. Interests, needs, beliefs and physical appearance change. One aspect stays constant: the true nature of each one of us.

What helps to mitigate marital conflicts?

Research on Americans and Europeans shows that married people perceive themselves to be happier than single, divorced or separated people (Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living).

“I think that if one is seeking to build a truly satisfying relationship, the best way of bringing this about is to get to know the deeper nature of the person and relate to her or him at that level, instead of merely on the basis of superficial characteristics.” (Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living)

 

Maintaing a healthy and happy marriage is a journey of spiritual growth. As much as it is about discovering the deeper nature of our spouse, as Dalai Lama wisely pinpoints, it is about fighting the demons inside us. And the biggest demon is the selfishness which characterises each human being.

Being open to improve ourselves

A happy marriage is built on the willingness to destroy the selfishness, which is the cause of most of the conflicts. Instead of wasting the time on being angry and pointing our finger at the faults in our spouse, a constructive attitude is to remember that both we and our spouses want to be happy and don’t want to suffer.

The perfect love after a quarter of a century of marriage does not come by the grace of God. On the contrary, it requires patience and team work to discover the “deeper nature” of our partners. I am not an expert in happy marriages, but one thing I’ve learned so far is that living happily ever after means knowing how to turn the selfishness into altruism towards our spouses.

 

When Is the Last Time You Did Something for a Stranger?

In some situations, helping others is not a question of having fun. It is a question of moral duty, which we have as human beings. There are two ways to look upon this moral duty: must-to-do or want-to-do thing. It may be beneficial to our happiness and personal growth if we embrace the latter attitude.

I don’t have time for myself, so much less for others

New York Times reported on a study done by Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist and four psychologists that finds that women perceive the time with their parents being similar to work. Tasks such as helping with the housekeeping or planning family gatherings with their parents are found to be less pleasant for women. Other studies find that modern women experience a sink in their personal happiness due to the increase of tasks they need to manage. (link to the article in the New York Times)

Some of us find time to go to the gym. Others invest time in finding out how to cook healthy food or where should they go in the next holiday. How about investing a tiny bit of time into cleansing our inner lives? Imagine how our lives would be with hardly any consuming thoughts.

As paradoxical as it may sound, it may help a great deal to get more involved in the community of humankind where we signed up when we were born. Being present for others around us means observing life as it happens. At first, it may be challenging because we are too engaged with our daily problems. Even when we don’t have a problem, our mind creates one.

The great news is that learning how to be aware of the people around us can be turned into a habit, just like any other habit. Starting with baby steps may be a wise decision. For example, we can start by learning to become aware of the people we pass by in the street.

A few days ago, something wonderful happened when I was travelling with my baby by bus. A middle-aged woman stopped right in front of us, gave an energising smile and said, “Hello”, to my baby.

He is usually looking at the other passengers with the curiosity of a child. The others do their best at avoiding eye contact, God knows where their thoughts are taking them. This woman not only noticed my baby’s eyes but greeted him with a spontaneous joy. For a few seconds, we stood there smiling at one another, forming a triangle of sunshine.

What happened after this short connection with a stranger? The numbness I felt was replaced by aliveness. My inner world turned into a space of joy and peace.

Our empathy, warmth and affection need training, just like our muscles

Make a baby smile.

Listen to an elderly person in the street.

Make room for spontaneous meetings with friends.

Keep company to your ageing parent when seeing a doctor.

Actions like these are maintaining the aliveness and spaciousness in us. Yes, it is very important to focus on our lives and to achieve our dreams. Yet, the meaningful and happy life is within our reach when we develop the habit of giving and receiving empathy, human warmth and affection.

There is potential for happiness in each one of us with so much creativity and positive energy. If we take some distance from our everyday problems and focus, for a change, on what happens around us, then we’ll find ways of releasing this potential!

 

Inspired how to Connect with Others

According to Dalai Lama, connecting with others is a source of happiness (The Art of Happiness). However, practising how to connect with others in an unfriendly environment may turn out to be very difficult, sometimes we may be tempted to give up. When we become parents, it is very important how we behave with others. Our children are there watching and they’ll remember when they become adults.

Connecting with others in a foreign culture

For me, the need to connect with others is like the need to breathe air. Maybe I wouldn’t have realised this, if I hadn’t moved to another country. After years of introducing myself to others as a foreigner, I have understood the importance of connecting with others to my lasting happiness. The problem is that the local culture is not encouraging the small talk. I have felt like a Don Quijote of modern times when communicating with others. Day by day, my small world was built on the foundations laid by the interaction with the few work colleagues and the few friends.

I sank into emotional distance. I was weeping in my loneliness as a foreigner surrounded by locals who are fond of silence and personal independence. I became faithful participant to the gym with the hope that I would stumble upon some friendly others. In vain! Years passed by, and I felt emotionally handicapped. The friends that I saw once a months were not enough to satisfy the thirst of human intimacy and closeness.

Connecting with other mothers is important but equally hard as with the rest

Having a family in the new country gave meaning to life. It saved my emotional life. For a while, I was so in love that nothing mattered. Alas, one day when I was walking with my baby, I realised that the family does not replace the basic human need to be able to connect with others. Becoming a stay-at-home mother makes things worse.The social interactions are limited. The emotional distance that I felt before becomes even bigger.

Visiting the playground became the daily challenge to reach out to the other mothers. Unlike me, they seem to be self-sufficient in their small world. No eye to eye contact, not a polite smile.

My baby smiles and comes closer to other babies. He is puzzled by the lack of response and he looks back at me. I shrug my shoulders, “What can I tell him?”. After few seconds, he approaches again other babies. Again and again, until he finds one baby that reciprocates and they start playing.

When the inspiration stroke

One day, I decided to imitate my baby’s behaviour. I initiated the small talk. I started talking to other mothers at the playground. I pretended I don’t see their reluctance to talk and smiled back. Deep inside, I was infuriated. I considered buying plane tickets and fly us far away from the country. In that moment of fury, Dalai Lama’s wisdom seemed but an utopia.

Why bother to reach out when you seem to be  the only one doing it?

Connecting with others means tapping into our compassion and building the strong foundation which makes us human:

“And once you encourage the thought of compassion in your mind, once that thought becomes active, then your attitude towards others changes automatically. If you approach others with the thought of compassion, that will automatically reduce fear and allow an openness with other people. It creates a positive, friendly atmosphere…And with that attitude, even if other person is unfriendly or doesn’t respond to you in a positive way, then at least you’ve approached the person with a feeling of openness that gives you a certain flexibility and the freedom to change your approach as needed.” (Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness)

To my mind, connecting with others is not only about being open or any other fear. It is also about knowing how to deal when you offer a part of you to someone who does not appreciate it. Here it is the point where we need to learn how to cultivate compassion and stay calm when confronted with unfriendly behaviours.

It’s worth to keep on fighting for connecting with others, despite their coldness and indifference. There are days that bring wonderful surprises. Some of the others reciprocate with friendliness and they share stories from their lives. I smile and I feel warmth. I feel human and energised.

A simple but friendly interaction can increase the daily happiness. My baby feels the positive vibes in the air as well. He continues playing happily.

Conclusion

When we become parents, we embrace the responsibility to be a role model for our children. Those of us who live in multicultural contexts, we want to show to our children that despite the multiculturalism where we may not always understand others, we can choose to relate to others as human beings, and not as national identities.

We want to expose our children to multicultural interactions. If others turn their back on us, we can explain to our children that it is OK to be sad.

It is not OK to become the centre of our sadness. Instead, we can try to relate to the unfriendly others at a human level, thinking that “She must have a bad day!”. Maybe tomorrow will bless us with a positive interaction.

The important lesson is to keep on practising our attitude to others on both occasions: when treated with friendliness and when treated with unfriendliness. It is a painful work, but it is one of the tickets to our lasting happiness! And an excellent example to our children!

 

So, Who Are You?

We are busy

Single people, people in relationships, people having a family – we buzz around all day long, in the pursuit of deeds that we perceive more or less meaningful.

Even the standard reply to the question “How are you?” has changed from “I am fine.” to “I am busy”. I wonder. Is it possible that we WANT to keep ourselves busy? Otherwise, how would we know what to do with ourselves? What thoughts and feelings would we have during half an hour of sitting in silence?

With whom to be better connected than with yourself?

When the evening comes and we put our head on the pillow, do we impersonate the wife, mother, student or subordinate that we were during daytime? Why not trying to find ourselves in the few minutes before sliding into the world of sleep?

What a treat at the end of the day, to reconnect to ourselves, to the joyous soul with which we came into this world! If we want to know why we came into this world, wouldn’t it be sensible to try to figure out who we were when we landed here? Who we were before we were damaged?

Maybe one night we get lucky and we feel our soul. We feel its core, its breath, and its wholeness. Who knows what else we would discover about who we truly are?

What if we don’t know how to reconnect to ourselves?

We need to look for help from the external environment so that we are put on the right track, which we would later follow on our own.

We need EXPOSURE. We need to start opening the channel that connects us to ourselves. For example, finding a group of people who are in a similar search and join them. Talk and discuss.

See the example of the Paphos Seminar, a one-week seminar on the psychology and philosophy of the good life, which has been organised twice a year for 18 years in Paphos, Cyprus by the philosopher Esa Saarinen (professor at Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland). The aim of the seminar is to help people “to construct their own ideas and to spread them internally”, “to open a broadband channel to people’ subjective sense of life orientation.” No ideas are imposed, simply a framework of philosophical ideas that offer food for thought. The participants are free to become emotional as they reflect upon different themes related to life, such as “present moment”, “love”, “choice” and “respect”. At the end of the seminar, each attendant discovers new insights into herself/himself.

The idea of this seminar can be replicated at a smaller case by you, me, by everyone. For example, how about gathering a group of friends with an interest in say, finding happiness, and discuss relevant books, every three months? (since we are busy people, maybe a more frequent interval for meetings is out of question.)

How about those ones of us who are too shy and too introvert for such sort of group activities? In this case, skipping the discussions and reading books on our own may equally help. Whatever works as long as we feel we have reached access the core of our souls.

Reflecting upon our life is enlightening the haze inside us. We don’t know why we are here but we should feel grateful for the life that was offered to us. Why not do the most with it and start by rescuing ourselves?

The Dormant Richness Inside Each One Of Us

Where does happiness come from?

“Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”, Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Father of USA.

Most certainly, it is easy to agree with Benjamin Franklin’s view on happiness. We all have our small joys in life, such as watching a TV series or going to an ice-hockey game in the weekend. The problem is that we don’t perceive these small joys as real and long-lasting happiness. Instead, our minds are wired to chase the happiness, which comes from the “good fortune”. And this is how we go through life feeling empty, depressed, miserable, self-disillusioned and bitter.

The hope helps us survive the bottom line. We will be happy when we find love, when we get our dream job, when I get promoted, when we become a mother, when our sexual life gets better, when we are rich, after I divorce, etc. Yet, all these future expectations are beguiling and the very source of unhappiness. For example, if you do become rich, there will always be room for making more money. Therefore, the chase after happiness continues and the present is a struggle. Or, if you do get promoted, you may be disillusioned to realise that it is not bringing as much happiness as you expected.

Are there any chance for us human beings to be happy at certain points in our lifetime?

Research on happiness has flourished in the last ten years, offering to individuals self-help tips on how to find their own happiness. Here are few books, which I consider worthy of mentioning: Sonja Lyubormiski, The Myths of Happiness, and Robert Biswas-Diener and Ed Diener, Unlocking The Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Scientific studies show that we can at least reach happy moods and irrespective of what causes these happy moods, they “lead people to be more productive, more likeable, more active, more healthy, more friendly, more helpful, more resilient, and more creative.” (Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness, pp. 265)

Have you ever made this test to observe people from the distance? If you did, I am sure you agree that you can spot the unhappy ones by the way they carry themselves. Especially in the case of us women, the gloomy atmosphere in our minds reflects in our body movements.

Has it ever happened to you to adopt new ways of thinking for few days and think you are finally happy just before you slide back into the old way of viewing the world? Is sustainable happiness but an abstract concept that exists in the work of psychologists such as Sonja Lyubomirsky?

Can we reach a steady level of happiness?

How we relate to happiness differs from one individual to another, depending on our genetical heritage, our childhood and adulthood experiences. However, I strongly believe that we all can find our glimpses of long-lasting happiness by digging out the dusty characteristics which make us human.

Compassion, empathy, love, gratitude, altruism, soul-to-soul connection: they all live in us, the problem is that they have been forgotten. The age of science has brought wonderful advancements into the world at the cost of taking us away from who we really are: human beings.

If we want to be happy, we need to take a good look inside and cultivate the seeds of all these characteristics that make us human. Yes, it hurts when we feel that there is not love in our life. While we are waiting for love, we’d benefit from turning our face and soul towards the people around us and offer them the crumbles of love that there are in us. When we hear about a sick person who needs money for surgery, why not donating few euros from our income? Why not joining a group of people with similar interests?

Life happens now and we fool ourselves if we think we have control over it and we’ll be happy tomorrow. If we can control something, well that something is the humanity in us. The happiness will follow it.

 

I Dream of Seeing More Compassion

What Do Religions Teach us?

Compassion, the feeling of concern for other person’s wellbeing, is one the main teachings of buddhism. In his book, Becoming Enlightened, His Holiness Dalai Lama talks about engendering great compassion on way to enlightenment. He describes seven steps to committing yourself to help others, which revolve around the idea of teaching your mind to find everyone dear and cultivate love for human beings, such as the poor and vulnerable.

Christianity talks also about the compassion in the parable of the good Samaritan, told by Jesus in the New Testament. The Samaritan helps a traveller which had been beaten and left almost dead on the side of the road, whereas the priest who had first passed by avoided the injured man.

My Experiences

My mother has always told me to help people who are in need. She repeated this message so many times throughout my childhood that it became one of my fundamental believes.

At my grandfather’s funeral, a friend of his told me a story about grandfather. One night, the two of them were walking home. They met a stranger who was going to walk all the way to the next village. It was a cold night and grandfather offered his jacket to the stranger. He was quite close to his home and the stranger needed the jacket more than he did. I was very close to my late grandfather but he had never mentioned this story to me. I would have never known it if it hadn’t been for his friend.

Ever since I’ve been a mother, I became more aware about how people behave towards my baby and I. For example, for one year, I have been walking around pushing the pram and carrying the baby bag in my back. When entering the stores, I keep the door open with one hand and with the other hand, I hold onto the pram. People come in and out as if I were hired to be the doorwoman or as if I were invisible. Rarely, someone notices me and keeps the door open so that I can enter as well.

Other times, it happens that I have to stand in line for buying a train ticket, for example. With a 11kg baby in the arms, fighting to escape, I decide to go in front and ask for permission to buy the ticket. Most of the times, people look at me as if I were a strange creature, talking a language they don’t understand. Their facial expression says, “Why don’t you stand in line like the rest of us?”. There is usually one person in the line who shouts, “Let her pass, she has a baby, can’t you see?”

What Do Scientists Tell Us?

I’ve been wondering why do I see so few reflections of compassion in my every day life? Do people feel compassion at all? Or is compassion but a virtue set as an example – never to be attained by humans – in spiritual and religious books? Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, thought of compassion as a “soft-heartedness and should not occur at all among human beings.” (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_compassionate_instinct)

However, recent studies done by psychologists and neuroscientists show that Kant was not right in his judgement. Both the body and the brain seem to be wired so that we respond to other people suffering. Yet, feeling compassion is different from acting as a result of feeling.

Social researcher David DeSteno did an experiment which showed that people have the tendency to help others if they perceive some commonality with the person they decide to help (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/the-science-of-compassion.html). He concludes that compassion can be cultivated by changing the way we perceive the people around us: in terms of similarities. DeSteno’s finding confirms the first step to practising compassion recommended by Buddhist teachings:

“I have difficulty seeing any person in the long past who has not been your father, mother, uncle, aunt, sister, master, abbot, guru or guiding figure.” (Dalai Lama, Becoming Enlightened, pp. 166)

My Conclusion

In conclusion, compassion lives in all of us. It is a matter of being aware that it is in us, and to be willing to practice it and cultivate it. Next time when I keep the door open so that people can come in and out of the store, I will be saying out loud, “You’re welcome!”

 

Which Do You Prefer: Kissing or Hugging Your Friends?

For the last ten years, I have been living in a multicultural environment in which I had to learn new ways to behave with friends. For example, when I meet a friend, I need to remind myself in what country I am so that I adapt the appropriate behaviour: kiss on both cheeks or give a hug around the neck.

The culture in my home country is to kiss friends on both cheeks. When I moved to the country of adoption, of course I started comparing how friends express affection towards one another! Of course, I interpreted the hugging around the neck as a sign of less affection, especially when the person hugging me would keep the rest of the body slightly farther from my body. I longed after kissing on cheeks as a sign of affection towards friends.

Darwin conjectured that kissing is innate in our genes. To date, scientists have not been able to conclude whether kissing is a learned behaviour for affection or whether we kiss out of instinct (Sheril Kirshenbaum, The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us). Hugging may have a similar innate tendency.

Instinctively, our bodies know better that kissing and hugging have health benefits, as the research shows. Hugging seems to increase the levels of oxytocin and reduce blood pressure (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4131508.stm). Women seem to get more health benefits from hugging than men, the research does not tell why. Maybe because women are more needy of affection? Maybe.

Children in particular are in need of affection. According to intelligence researcher Jay Gordon, co-author of “Brighter Baby”, children who receive long hugs each day, are smarter (http://www.ehow.com/about_4572011_what-hug-day.html).

Romantic kissing was proven to relax the brain, reduce stomach and bladder infections, and relieve pain, just to name a few of the benefits (http://www.bestkisses.com/kisses-for-health.html). I could not find any study on what kind of health benefits the kiss on the cheeks has. I would argue that kissing on the cheeks has the psychological benefit of boosting the self-esteem. Isn’t that a wonderful feeling when you are reminded that you have friends who love and respect you?

Taking a closer look at the ‘kiss on the cheek’ culture, with disappointment I came to realise that sometimes the kisses were theatrical. So, the years spent in the multicultural environment, opened my eyes to these two types of non-verbal communication of affection between friends and put an end to my longing after kissing on the cheek. In the end, I guess that both kissing and hugging can convey affection in an equal manner provided the underlying feeling is sincere.

Beyond the cultural norms, showing affection to friends is a question of personal preference. Some may be more comfortable with kissing, others with hugging. Some may prefer both, while others would skip both. It depends on how comfortable each of us is with showing our affection. And as long as we do it from the heart, the health benefits are guaranteed. How many of the hugs and kisses that we receive during one day are sincere? Let’s do the counting in our silent corner, shall we?

BTW Merry Christmas to You! 🙂

Messages In Our Eyes

I love travelling. Touristic attractions are of secondary interest. My main interest are the people who live in the destinations that I visit. How do those people look, how do they behave, and what perspective on life do they have?

I am not a fan of souvenirs in the form of objects. I do take my own souvenirs, which come as short stories told by a pair of eyes. For example, the story of the candid eyes of the 70 year old taxi driver I met in Lisbon. In a very passionate voice, he told me about the general Gomez da Costa – my introduction to the history of Portugal. I couldn’t understand most of his story since my Portuguese is quite poor. But the most important story was the one spoken by his eyes – compassionate and humble; they spoke of a life of struggles. I would have wanted to know what kind of life he had. In the end, I was just happy to have been touched by the humbleness in his eyes.

I was in a metro in Paris, on my way to the Sacre-Coeur Basilica when a young man, aged between 25 to 30, stepped in the metro and took a seat right opposite to where I was sitting. He looked into my eyes with the intensity of his witty hazelnut eyes. “I’d like to know you”, his eyes said. I blushed and looked away. In another life or at another moment in this life, I would have dated him.

In our latest trip to Athens, during the first breakfast at the hotel, my eyes met the eyes of a middle-aged woman who was sitting next to our table. She looked at me as if with fear (I don’t think I look that bad). She was sitting with her husband (I checked their rings). He was eating with his eyes fixed on the plate. There was no communication between the two of them. She had finished her breakfast first. When he finished his, he stood up without saying any word and she instantly followed him.

The second morning, they were having their breakfast when I entered the breakfast room. Their body postures were the same – she staring in the void and looking as if she was sitting on needles and he was eating, looking at the plate only. My eyes and her eyes met again. For few seconds, she gave a faint smile but then she stopped as if she was doing a bad thing.

The third morning, I met them again. This time, I took a table, which was farther from their table. I could not stand any longer his energy of a grumpy man. But this time, when I met her eyes, I could read, “Help!”. He was her dictator and she was his obeying servant. I would have wanted to go to her and tell her, “Set yourself free, woman! You’ll be happier without him”. Instead, I just gave her the most comforting smile. I wished it was possible to send her with my eyes the strength that she needed to break free.

Of course, I do not know the history of that couple, but I could clearly see that she was like a chained dog. She didn’t know how to carry herself. I can’t save her but at least I’ll be thinking of her.

As strange as it may sound, there are moments when these eyes pop up in my mind. They are the souvenirs stored safely inside me. They come out of the hidden place when they feel they may be forgotten.

According to the common belief, the eyes are the mirror of the soul. In addition, I think that the eyes remind us that despite the fact that physically we are independent human beings, deep inside we are all the same – in search of connecting with other souls.

Who knows what God wants?

Some years ago, I was in a romantic relationship, in which a quarrel-free day was enough of a reason for a celebration.

During one of the fights, when he was charging his jealousy at me, I replied, “God is my witness, I am innocent!”

“Stop it! You and your obsession with God! You’re a fanatic!”

His comment was flabbergasting. What started as a jealousy fight, ended up as a fight about my belief in God. The days that followed, when I was talking with my parents or friends from my home country, I started paying close attention to the words they used. I became more aware of what had been taken for granted for all the years. I concluded that I had grown up in an environment, where we are accustomed to pronouncing the word God, in almost every mundane conversation. Whether we express our hopes about the future or the frustrations about the present, at one point we say “May God help us!”. At the same time, I started paying attention to how friends from his culture were talking. They were at the other extreme, never mentioning anything about God. Even those who did believe in God.

Back to the current stage of my life, when reading Jesse Bering’s book, “The God Instinct, The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life“, I found this quote on the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, who in 2005, publicly declared his theory according to which the hurricane Katrina was caused by God: “Surely God is mad at America. Surely He’s not approving of us being in Iraq under false pretence …”. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Was he serious?!

Reading Mr Nagin’s declaration, I remembered that before the USA’s invasion in Iraq, I happened to watch on TV one of the public speeches about the need of invading Iraq by the president George Bush Jr. Of course, I can’t remember the exact words, but I do recall that the ex-president mentioned something like “in the name of God”.

Does anyone know what God may or may not want? If yes, how can they know? I, Mr Ray Nagin and Mr George Bush Jr had a similar way of thinking: we gave God an active role to whatever happened in our lives. Though, we had our particular ways of doing just that. During my fight with my ex boyfriend, I had given God the role of the moral Witness of my life. Mr Nagin gave God the role of the Judge who disapproved the actions of the American nation, hence he sent the Hurricane Katrina upon America. Mr George Bush Jr, gave God the role of the Arbiter who gave the permission to invade another country.

I try to imagine how this world would be if we tried to let God be what He is. If we did that, then we would need to possess lots of integrity to be responsible for our own actions. If we did that, then we would need a huge amount of inner strength to still believe in God, even when bad things happen to good people.