As human beings, most of us are interested in being happy, centered, calm, and stable. We seek to be content. These are things that we typically achieve through loving and being loved, working and receiving, contemplation, and, usually, going out into the world in pursuit for these things...a pursuit of happiness. When we think about venturing on our pursuit for happiness, we think of exactly that, a venture out, a venture out to find and bring back, so that we can add substance to our lives. But what if we can find all of these things, or at least most of these things, primarily inside of ourselves. What if it is not just about venturing out, but venturing in.
The truth is, we can fix a lot of our problems, and fulfill a lot of our needs, by looking inward and fine-tuning our moral compass. When we become an all around better, honest, more good-willed human being, we establish security for ourselves in something good, and that something good is ourselves. The body that we live in and the soul that we house. Of course, we cannot even begin to encompass good and bad and define ourselves through a five point list. The list to follow is not meant to be a black and white "must do," or even a specific framework. It is meant to throw out an idea, form this rough, unpolished, raw concept of goodness and what the embodiment of some good things are, and ponder on it for oneself...a single step can be the beginning of a huge embarkment, and a single word can be the catalyst to a brilliant idea, a revolution. Here are three perspectives to think about, and embody, in a quest for simple goodness:
1. Understand that the world is wide.
We humans live in several spheres, the sphere of our culture, the sphere of our families/personal lives/daily routine, and the sphere of who we are to ourselves. Because we have this ultra clear, ultra specific, set of "the way things go," it is so easy to adopt this egocentric idea that we, and we alone have exactly everything figured out. That OUR culture is the one that has discovered the right way, that OUR family/hometown/way of life has discovered the right way, that we as individuals have discovered the right way. When we adopt this idea, we close of so many portals. We close off the ability to learn, understand, and potentially grow. We also make the mistake that entertaining these concepts will cause us to compromise our moral beliefs, our way of life, so we shy away from them. Ponder this: when you learn how to read a book, you can learn to understand a book, and maybe even relate a little bit of yourself to the book, without adopting that book as your favorite book. There are some cultures that answer questions in story telling. If you ask an old Italian person (a.k.a, my grandfather) a question, their answer will almost always begin with a "there once was a man" or, "when I was younger;" if you ask a doctor, mathematician, or scientist a question, you are likely to get a formatted, factual response to either the reasoning behind their answer, or a well versed how-to. Neither one is wrong. But if both were so confident that they were totally right, imagine what they'd lose. Facts and format provide credibility, logic, and format, which makes sense to how our brain compartmentalizes things. However, people are not entirely logical. We are messy, emotional, opinionated; we feel more comfortable with a conversation with a flawed, human insurance agent than reading an insurance policy with black and white, completely factual fine-toothed details. Imagine how much better both methods of answering could be if they learned from one another, without losing a single aspect of what they were prior to.
2. Understand that the world is so wide that we will never be able to understand everything...but the sublime is in the continuation of trying.
When we try, we learn. When we learn, we understand. When we understand, we are able to love. Back in high school, I was a teacher's aid to a class that taught post-secondary (18-21 years of age) students. One of the students looked what society would deem as absolutely "normal." There were no physical indications that he was special or different with how he processed information. When I was with him in public places during field trips, there were no physical attributions that tipped the people going about their day that I was with someone who was different them, so without that physical indication, they didn't have the cue to understand. This led to a lot of unnecessary scrutiny and judgment for him, more so then the rest of the students faced. Once, my then boyfriend, now fiancé attended a car wash for the class. The three of us were washing a woman's car. The student looked at Kieran, my boyfriend, and said, "So Casey is your girlfriend?" He answered yes. "So do you get to touch and kiss her? If I got a girlfriend would I get to do that?" Kieran laughed cooly, "Well, as much as I could talk about her all day, but this is something that you should talk to your parents about." Instantaneously, the lady, who assumed that he was just a regular student who was helping out, wrinkled her nose in disgust. She reconciled him in her head as a pervy high school boy. She didn't stay long enough to hear him say, "Well, when I get a girlfriend, I will love protecting her. If anyone ever said anything to her, I'd protect her." See, that lady didn't understand him. She didn't understand that he wasn't "normal" enough for society to see him as normal, but he wasn't "un-normal" enough to not be able to understand from T.V., books, and seeing people in real life, the aspect of sex, romance, and love...and attempt to try to understand it, but not be able to grasp every in and out of it because of his mental inhibitions. She didn't understand that he was struggling with the idea of wanting to love someone/something but not knowing how to maturely go about contemplating it, which lead to struggles of self-inadequacy and frustration. Now, I don't fault this woman, because there was no way with the time that she had been given, for her to grow to understand this person. There is no way that any of us have enough time on our hands to be able to understand everything...but it doesn't mean that we cannot try. Harper Lee once said in the book To Kill A Mockingbird, "Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what." I would love to see human beings embrace the courageous act to let go of themselves and their predetermined ideas enough to love the people around them.
3. When presented with the opportunity to get to experience something new, or learn about and get to know someone new, always assume the position of knowing nothing.
This one really hits home for me. I come from a small, fairly rural town. A lot of the people in my town don't plan on going to college. A lot of the people in my town get blue-collar careers working with their hands. A large portion of the people in my town can't speak a second language or write an MLA-formatted college essay. In fact, much of the older generations in my town grew up in a very rural environment and never learned how to read and write properly. A lot of the people who are surrounded by me where I live now for college, are in college, or plan on going to college, and come from a family who holds college degrees. In my more Northern, more urbanized, more wealthy location of current, if you took a survey, you would most definitely conclude that individuals up here deem a blue collar job in farming, mechanics, carpentry, etc. are "lesser" in intelligence, and this breaks my heart. For instance, Kieran's grandfather and my father never went to college. They both work in carpentry. His grandfather writes poetry and my dad loves to draw and paint beautiful things. They can both do geometric equations in their heads and come up with an answer in thirty seconds. They love working with their hands and creating beautiful things for other people, but they don't have a degree on their wall that solidifies their academic success. As a society, we view those with the highest IQ to be the most cultured, but that idea is incomplete. In my town, the culture is that if you break down on the side of the road, within five minutes you will have a group of people who pulled off to the side to help you. The individuals who may be seen as "lesser" or "stupid" are the ones who stopped going to school in the fifth grade so that they could help their family, and would most certainly have the knowledge to survive in the wilderness for three days. If the roles were reversed, and we judged the merit of intelligence based on handiwork and wilderness and agricultural skills, I, a literate college student who is on the deans list and gets straight A's, would be considered extremely stupid. In order to be a good person, we need to work at being a good person to people who are not like us. We need to stop looking at people through the lens of society, and start looking at people as people, and their innate worthiness and capability that they have as human beings on this earth with us. When I study a group of people, I don't study them from the viewpoint of a Christian, a woman, or my political affiliation, though I am, in essence, all of the previous things. I see them as they present themselves to me, and though I am still very much me, very much exactly who I am, I temporarily disassociate myself, from, well anything that has to do with the ideology of me, all of which I can advocate for and write about and love on my own time, so that I can learn about who this person is within the course of humanity. This has lead me to be able to have a two hour long conversation (while crying) with a 40 year old Muslim man in a coffee shop about a French woman he fell in love with when he was twenty. He was there with her when she died in the hospital after a car crash and he has never touched another woman since. This has also allowed me to have a conversation with an old, conservative farmer who didn't know how to read but loved books so much that he listened to them on audio tape wherever he went. Both souls were beautiful, and both conversations were precious to my heart.
In this life, we will oftentimes find that the times we feel the most whole are not the times we fill ourselves with ourselves, but instead when we allow ourselves to be filled with others. When we allow ourselves to love when it is hard, and understand when it is hard, and try when it is impossible, and love the journey of trying. The inward, infinite, journey into oneself and out of oneself. The finding of ourselves through the loving of others.
