Where is home?

A well-known adage says that “home is where the heart is”. This should necessarily lead us to question, where is the heart? And is the heart always at home?

Such basic question can be sliced and diced to gain a lot of depth into this analysis. We can thus start by trying to define what is “where”. Is it a physical place, or is it a state of mind? And regarding the “heart” portion, does it refer to our mind, or our soul?

In order to define these items, we must analyze what “home” encompasses. By definition, it should a place where we feel comfortable and content. A familiar environment that provides safety and a feeling of attachment that other places do not offer. But then we must also realize that not every familiar place, nor any safe environment, nor any place that we feel any attachment to necessarily makes us feel at home by those basic qualities alone.

A home is therefore not easily defined, yet we simply feel at home when we find that special spot of well being. This could partly be because home could be more than the location where we are: It may as well be the physical place that provides us peace of mind, where our soul and our entire being find serenity and feel in familiar surroundings that provide tranquility, safety, and nurturing.

Home is therefore a combination of factors. Physical surroundings are important, as they are enablers of our well being. But it is equally important that our minds are prepared to make themselves at home and be at ease wherever they may be. In other words, “home” is an entity that lives within us, and wakes up whenever the appropriate external conditions are met. Only when all those factors are combined and interact in harmony is that we can feel ourselves at home, wherever we choose it to be.

Our modern lives sometimes demand that we move constantly from one dwelling to another, from one city to another, from one country to another. Thus we should not think of home as a static place anymore. Home comes with us, and the surroundings that enable us to develop our fullest have the potential of becoming our home if the appropriate conditions are met. Home is both a state of mind and a physical place, none of which can become home on their very own.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

To throw or not the towel?

There is a common recommendation that dreams and objectives should not be given up. The key to achieve success, according to the popular belief, is to continue trying until one day such dreams or objectives will come to fruition. The key seems to be perseverance and self-confidence.

There is an extensive amount of well-documented instances where the above formula has worked. Numerous people have pursued a dream tirelessly until said dream materializes, in the shape and form that they originally envisioned. And that is the ultimate success story that a person can achieve.

Nonetheless, there are also well documented instances where an individual pursues a dream, and does not ultimately achieve the results that they sought. Or the results represent only a partial fruition of their original pursuit. Is this, then, the definition of failure?

Before coming to conclusions, it may be important to reflect on the concepts of success and failure. Seen from a very general view, both terms would appear to be the exact complete opposites: Success is the achievement of an objective, failure is the lack of said achievement, despite of our best attempts to reach our desired result. Simple enough, right?

Said conclusion, in principle, would be correct. But if we were able to look at the anatomy of success through a microscope, it would become evident that the fabric of success is in fact made up of smaller successes and smaller failures. Rarely it is possible to reach success in a straightforward, smooth, linear manner. Generally speaking, endeavours collect some successes and some failures along the way. What is important is to see the larger scheme of things to understand whether our enterprise is heading towards a positive outcome, or an undesired one. Or even more intriguingly, whether it is heading towards unexpected, yet positive results.

In order to evaluate whether our projects and objectives are heading towards a desirable outcome, we must proverbially look at the forest, not at the tree. We should understand that sometimes, even when there are individual failures, they should not necessarily be the end of our work towards our objectives. But it is also humble and smart to realize that when failures start accumulating, and the overall trajectory of our endeavours seem to be going unfavourably, there’s nothing wrong with accepting the result and moving on towards other projects that may yield better outcomes.

When life gives you lemons

There are instances in life when we regret some of our past decisions. When a project goes awry, or our efforts result in outcomes that are very different, if not entirely opposite, to what we were hoping to achieve, it is normal to have negative feelings about ourselves.

Realizing that some decisions we have made resulted in a negative effect is a hard pill to swallow. Course correcting may sometimes take a very long time. It may even take some pain, great effort, and a significant amount of time to come back to a position where we feel comfortable and thriving again.

These experiences, arguably, are some of the most important lessons be learned in life. They are some of the toughest challenges to be conquered during our time in this world. When interpreted properly, they are packed with important teachings that will help us make better decisions in the future, and to make the best out of any negative situations that may have arisen from unfortunate past decisions.

Above all, it is important to accept our mistakes and to move towards creating for ourselves a better situation. Admitting that something has gone wrong is a fundamental display of humility and willingness to move on. Even if the path ahead is uphill, and we long for the days when we were already feeling at the top of it, we need to remember that there is no other way to conquer a mountain we’ve conquered before than to climb it up once again. This time, it will be with valuable learnings that will help us appreciate the journey in a much brighter, positive light.

Purpose or meaning?

There is a common theory that suggest that every single individual has a predetermined purpose in life. The big mystery, of course, is to discover what exactly is that purpose supposed to be for each of us. Looking for said meaning often leads to more questions than answers: Does our purpose get fulfilled in a very particular moment in time, or it slowly unfolds throughout our lifetime? Will we realize when our purpose has been fulfilled, or it will remain concealed even after completion? Is there a single purpose in our lives, or there are multiple?

There might have been sages and genius through the history of mankind who might have postulated plausible answers to those questions, and even further, they might have been able to figure out what their own purpose in life was. Those who achieve that level of enlightenment certainly belong to a select and privileged group. For the remainder of us, we might never reach a conclusive answer.

Perhaps we can examine these (seemingly unanswerable) questions from a different perspective. Instead of attempting to decipher what our preassigned purpose in life is, should we not attempt to craft the meaning that we want to give to our life? Do we want to live a life of fulfillment, or a life of dullness? Are there any dreams and objectives that we want to pursue, or we simply want to find a comfortable spot to spend our time?

If we have a preassigned purpose in life by design, we might as well fulfill it in the most meaningful way. And meaning comes from achieving the best that we have to offer, in a way that we can, at least, feel like our time in this world is being well spent.

 

Peace beyond meditation

Meditation is widely regarded as the most coveted technique to achieve a state of relaxation and peace. Indeed, when a person achieves a meditative state, they can observe themselves from a selfless perspective that can help better identify emotions and events that afflict their mind and soul. In turn, this is a very effective way to cope with all those negative influences in such a way that the person can adapt to their life reality or circumstances, and heal themselves.

A person that has attained a sense of peace through meditation, however, has not yet reached the finish line. Attaining inner peace is only one of several steps to be followed in order to truly heal and make the best possible out of ourselves. At the end of the day, it is important to remember that we heal ourselves not only for our own well being, but also to have the best impact in our community and the environments that surround us. In other words, we help ourselves to be better, so that we can help others to be better along with us.

But how do we extend our peace and well being to spread among others? Perhaps the most effective way to do this is to take actions that have a meaningful impact on other people. Some ideas could include the following:

• Volunteering time and effort to a group of people or a cause
• Development of artistic work (composition of music, poetry, etc)
• Reducing or eliminating harmful behaviours
• Performing random acts of kindness

The above are only a few tangible actions that can help extend our inner peace and improved self to the benefit of others. There are many other ways in which a person can achieve this. It may even take a group of actions to achieve this ultimate state of well being that extends beyond the self.

Whatever actions can take our positive energy beyond our own body and mind to influence others in a positive way are powerful. Remember that a person who can spread the joy of well being will be accomplishing a much deeper meaning out of their own meditation and healing than a person who keeps the benefits of this at a personal level only.

 

Disconnecting ourselves to reconnect to ourselves

Our modern lives place a lot of emphasis on the importance of being always connected. In this technological era, we are required to be constantly online in order to remain in contact with friends and family. We also require technological tools in order to perform our jobs. We rely on the web in order to obtain driving directions and restaurant recommendations. Our lives are all about being and remaining connected.

Experiencing such high volumes of connectivity to our world is something relatively new. It was only a few decades ago when people still had the opportunity to be disconnected from the outside world every day. What did people do with spare time in their hands? Life under those conditions might appear boring to modern eyes. But back in those days, people who used their downtime wisely focused their time and energy to rest their body and mind, and to form quality bonds with their families and loved ones.

Those breaks in the olden times were in fact a good thing. Humans are not designed to be alert around the clock, much less to process nonstop, massive amounts of information every day. Our bodies and minds require our full focus to provide them routinely care and attention.

We must look to disconnect from our technology-dependent, non-stopping, high volumes of information lifestyles at times in order to comfort our bodies and our minds. But this does not mean giving up our modern lifestyle and living as people used to centuries ago. On the contrary, what we should do is to embrace our lives but schedule periodic downtimes to perform our self-maintenance: meditation, exercise, enjoyment of hobbies and arts, and tending to our feelings are some of the self-constructive activities that we can engage during our downtime. These can only bring as a result a more meaningful enjoyment of our days, and a true connection to our inner self and our passions.

Let’s live connected to our modern world, but also connected to ourselves by disconnecting from the noise and reconnecting to our body and mind.

 

Thich Nhat Hanh: On being yourself

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the utmost masters of self-awareness and meditation.

In this video, he provides insights about being oneself in a masterful fashion. Worth watching his speech.

Inflicting damage

 

Let’s picture a situation where an individual (let’s call him John) is the owner of a shop. John has two employees, whom we shall name Jane and Bill. John has a good relationship with Jane and Bill, and business is good.

However, during a weak period in economy, John’s shop starts to see a decline in clientele, and his sales drop. However, his costs remain high, as he is reluctant to let any of his employees go. Unfortunately, at some point, the situation becomes so critical that he faces a couple of options: to close his shop, which would compromise his own livelihood and that of his employees, or to downsize and let one of his employees go, which would compromise the affected party’s livelihood.

John makes a tough decision, and with the hope of giving his business some time to recover and turn around, he decides to let Bill go. John is fully aware that this decision will have an undesirable impact in Bill’s life. In the meantime, he reassures Jane that she’s keeping her job, which guarantees her immediate livelihood.

In the above example, John was facing a tough situation where, regardless of his ultimate decision, some collateral damages would have been inflicted, whether upon himself or upon other people. In his case, his decision ended up hurting Bill, although he did somehow manage to salvage a relatively positive outcome for Jane and himself. Nevertheless, John cannot help but feel guilt for his action, despite this being mostly caused by situations beyond his control (i.e. adverse business conditions).

In our case above, does John’s decision make him a bad individual?

Unfortunately, just like in John’s case, there are situations in life where people with good intentions end up inflicting damage upon other individuals. People make difficult decisions where, despite of being fully aware of the consequences, they act to avoid a more dangerous situation, or to keep the danger away from themselves or others.

When we inflict damage upon others, does that makes us bad people?

What if the damage caused is not intentional?

What if, against our will and our best intentions, our interactions with people result in unwanted consequences that affect other people?

Are we to blame ourselves for damage inflicted upon others, even when we tried our best to avoid it?

There is no easy answer to any of the above questions. In fact, there are no right or wrong answers: When we act fully aware of the consequences of our acts, we are accountable for the results of our actions. Even when we might not be fully aware of the consequences that our decisions would have, we still hold some responsibility on their consequences.

On the other hand, however, we can argue that when we face these dilemmas where we know undesirable consequences will arise, we can count ourselves as victims of the dilemma itself. Essentially, when damage is inflicted as a result of a difficult decision where we cannot avoid the collateral effects, we are making those decisions based on particular circumstances. We are not to blame about causing one damaging effect, which we chose over another outcome which would have been in itself another damaging effect.

It is unfortunate and sad that sometimes life gives us these  challenges, where the outcomes of our moves will have a negative effect elsewhere. However, it is up to us to make the best out of those outcomes: When these situations arise, and we make difficult decisions, nothing prevents us from being human and approaching the people who have been affected by our actions or decisions. It is at the point, more than ever before, our responsibility to support them and make sure that the damage inflicted is reduced to the least possible, and offer any kind of assistance to them.

As humans, we must care for one another. Even when we have inflicted pain or damage unto others, albeit unwillingly, it is our responsibility to care for them and to be as human as possible during their difficult times. Let’s not forget that our own path through life does contain some rough patches as well, and we never know when will we be the ones impacted by the collateral damage of other people’s decisions. The more humane we are with people in need of our support, the better support we will likely receive if we hit a rough patch.

Awakening the child in us

The Little Prince, by Antoine the Saint-Exupéry, is one of my favourite books of all time. Ever since I was a young child, I have been captivated by such a simple, yet beautiful tale. I have had the opportunity to read it in a few languages, including its original French, and I can attest that the beauty of the story does not get lost in translation.

I admire this book for many reasons. Not only the story is entertaining and easily understood by any reader regardless of their age or background. In my opinion, perhaps the most important attribute of the Little Prince is that it is a fantastic philosophical work.

For people who have not read The Little Prince yet, I highly recommend you do so. It should take less than two hours to complete from beginning to end. In short, the story is about the interaction between the author himself, and an extraterrestrial young kid (The Little Prince) who left his native asteroid and, as part of his galactic voyage, he visits Earth. Saint-Exupéry, a pilot, is stranded in the Sahara trying to repair his broken airplane, when the Little Prince meets him and they become friends. This friendship leads to a beautiful philosophical reflection where the author recalls his views of the world when he was a child, which in turn helps him understand the views on life that the Little Prince shares with him.

As grown-ups, exploring life through the eyes of a child can seem somewhat immature. However, it is one of the most complex reflections we can do. As we live through life, we progressively acquire more “adult” views of ourselves, the world and the people who surround us – and this leads to forget the child we used to be. While this happens, the thoughts, views and dreams that we had as children also vanish, and are substituted by more “mature” ideas where we measure the value of thoughts and ideas in more tangible and numerical standards than we used to.

Growing up, nevertheless, is a natural process – and a necessary one too. We could not live our whole lives thinking, dreaming, and playing as children. As people transition from childhood to adulthood, there is a lot of learning occurring in between, which helps us craft new thoughts and ideas, and in turn allow us to set new goals and dreams adequate for our present and our future. However, as we grow up, we also tend to keep out of our radar some of the values and dreams that we looked to pursue during our infancy.

What the Little Prince masters to portray is that every one of us started life by being a child. This child still lives within ourselves. Therefore, our childhood memories, values, dreams and passions accompany us the rest of our lives, however they are there in a dormant state. It is up to each individual to awaken those memories, dreams and thoughts, and incorporate them in their adult life as well.

It may be hard in the beginning to reach our inner child, especially if we have been disconnected from our childhood memories and dreams for a long time. Making this connection a goal in our regular meditation is very helpful. Recalling our childhood thoughts might be a very powerful experience which may awaken various unexpected emotions at first, but as we continue to practice this over time, it will also become an easier and more natural approach. As we reach this state we gradually understand our views of life as we were children, and with a little effort, we can incorporate some of them to our current life plans and goals.

By incorporating our childhood thoughts in our meditation on regular basis, slowly but surely we will make room for our inner child in our adulthood, and with that, we will also make room to our childhood dreams. By dedicating some of our valuable adult time (maybe an hour, maybe a few minutes) regularly to work towards fulfilling those childhood dreams, we will be in turn working towards living a more fulfilling life.

Knowing ourselves: The quest of our lifetime

Knowing ourselves would appear to be something natural, and to an extent something that we can take for granted. From the moment we are born, every single second of our life is spent with ourselves. We are raised by our parents and are surrounded initially by immediate family. Thereafter, as we grow up, we attend school and meet childhood friends and teachers. As we experience it through all of its facets, we do so by coming in contact with different people and their thoughts, ideas, knowledge, and actions. But inevitably, we are at all moment with ourselves.

If we spend so much time with ourselves, would it not just make sense to say that we know ourselves better than anyone or anything else?

As logic as that may seem, throughout our lives we find ourselves trapped in life experiences where we are not in control of ourselves. For example, we get sick. We also react to certain situations with attitudes and emotions that surprise ourselves and people who surround us. We develop likes for activities that we did not previously enjoy, and lose interest in subjects that we felt passionate about in the past. And it is through these behaviours that we understand that, perhaps, we do not know ourselves as much as we thought.

Unfortunately, no one in our life provides a recipe or formula to get to know ourselves and enable us to predict our every reaction, feeling, and ways of thinking. No one can tell us the way we will behave and the decisions we will be making as we experience the different circumstances that we will face in our lives. No one except, of course, ourselves. And it is exactly at this point where we face a great paradox: On the one hand, we humbly acknowledge that we do not inherently know ourselves, but on the other hand no one can know us better than ourselves.

The solution to this paradox resides in opening our minds, but not in an ideological way – but rather in a physical and spiritual fashion. To really know and understand ourselves, we need to have the willingness to learn about ourselves. This willingness takes effort, practice, and humility above anything else. Humility to acknowledge our physical and spiritual limitations, and our humility to accept inside and outside knowledge in order to develop a better understanding of who we are.

As we partake in the journey to discover our most basic nature, we do so with full awareness that we are beyond simple physical entities. Indeed, there is a physical aspect in us: We all have a physical body which is our vehicle to navigate the physical world. However, we must also be aware that we are not limited to only our physical nature – we have a powerful mind which serves as the bridge between our physical being and all other parts of ourselves that are not tangible, like our thoughts and our consciousness.

Through embarking in various experiences in life and constant meditation, we have the potential to discover much about ourselves: Things we like and we don’t like, talents that we had no knowledge about, interests, ideologies, emotions, and interests. However, these experiences are not lived in a single day, nor it takes a few meditation sessions to really understand our thoughts. It is almost needless to say that unearthing these discoveries takes many years of diligent willingness to discover, in a rather neutral mindset, secrets about ourselves.

Knowing and understanding ourselves is like building a house: It will take more than just putting a few bricks together to call it “a house”. It takes hard time and detailed work to achieve a final product that we can call a house, where all pieces -every brick, every nail and every wood stick- fit together to create a magnificent building. Likewise, to truly know who we are it will take a lot of introspective work to discover more about us. And the more we know about us, the better we will understand the much we can give to others and help them come closer to their own self: At the end of the day, the moment each individual understands themselves, they will also understand the mission they are accomplishing in life and the role they are playing in helping achieve the large universal goal that we are all collectively pursuing – whatever that may be.