Monthly Archives: April 2008

Social Etiquette

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Reading one of the better newspapers yesterday, there was a interview/chat with a woman who has written a book about social etiquette. People could ask questions on the website which she would answer. One of the answers was whether a woman should take off her hat on a wedding or keep it on. And the answer was that if the reception was expected to be ended by 6pm, a woman should never wear a hat at all, and if it was an evening thing, the hat was part of her clothing and should be kept on, except during the dinner.

What I found funny about this is not social etiquette as a phenomena, it really have it’s place. If everyone made their own rules about how to act and behave, a lot of confusion and problems would arise, so a common agreed upon set of rules can be quite beneficial (although not necessary for survival). What I find a bit funny is that she states it like a given fact, not up for discussion. Like a universal law that can’t be broken.
Sometimes it is more like gravity and sometimes more like religious dogma, like “Only Jesus can save you”.

I have often thought about why there is such a thing as etiquette, and although I know there are good parts about it, I can also see how it used by the mind as a fixed rule instead of a guideline. I have done it hundreds of times, and will probably do it again more than once. Finding ourselves in situations where we don’t know how to behave makes most of us uncomfortable, and when we find there is a rule for how we should behave, we can get quite obsessed about it. Living life without rules just brings too much anxiety and fear.

This can easily be spotted in academic settings (and in all settings where knowledge is present). When we know very little about a subject, we tend to take the theories we do know and make them into dogma. We can defend these beliefs as if our life depended on them. I have done that many times, and probably, so have you. However, the more we learn, the more we relax around the subject, and we become a little bit more humble and realize that there are many things that we still don’t understand.
It is just the same whether it is love, knowledge or social etiquette. The more insecure we feel, the more we cling to things as something fixed and universal, unquestionable.
When we feel relaxed and safe, however, we suddenly become spontaneous in the situation, seeing rules and theories more as guidelines, we start allowing other people to behave in their own individual way and not the same way as everyone else.

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A Weird Day

Monday, April 14, 2008

Yesterday was a pretty weird day in a way. I woke up at 9 in the morning but couldn’t find any reason to get out of bed until three hours later. There was so many things going on inside me, all of them at the same time trying to get my attention. It was like energy going out in all directions at the same time, all fighting to pull me where they wanted me to go. Yet I knew that nothing I did would satisfy this restlessness in me.

So I just didn’t get up. There was no point. When I finally went up, it was because I had to eat something. And when I got hungry, that desire was the only desire strong enough to pull me out of bed.

There is so much that has changed in me these past months. I can see a new me emerging, even though I don’t know what it is. I am more open, relaxed and spontaneous than ever before, and to tell the truth, it scares me. It’s like having a battle between two forces within me, and every time I do something spontaneous I get scared because it feels like I am loosing control. At the same time there is a trust that what comes out has to come out, and nothing bad has really happened, it’s just that I get so afraid from the feeling of loosing control. To not know what will happen, not being able to predict my behaviour or my future. And very much how others will react when I have this rather strange behaviour.
It might seem like something bad, and at times it does feel that way, but I haven’t felt this alive ever in my life.

Breaking up has in many ways been a breaking out. Out of a self-made prison. Stepping out of my comfort zone and in to the unknown. My view of what a relationship is has changed. Instead of something exclusive and fixed that you share with one person, it is more like two threads that intertwine for some time, fresh and spontaneous in every second fully knowing that they might split up and go separate ways.

It used to be unthinkable. I have seen relationships as something that will last for eternity, but now I can see that this way of showing love is only a way to avoid seeing reality. That nothing in this world will last, that their is no security, and the more we focus on this ideas that say there is security, the more bound we become to the other person.
When I was nineteen I met this girl that I really liked, but I always felt she didn’t have the same strong feelings for me. I analyzed her words, her behaviour and was constantly demanding proof that she liked me. And the more I demanded from her, the more she pulled away, making me feel even more insecure. And the less security I felt, the more I pushed. Luckily for both of us, it didn’t last long, and today I am happy for it, because I could see sides of myself that I didn’t think I had.
I guess we all do that. We demand this small signs of proof that we are loved, saying not only that we love someone, but that we will do it forever. But this need to have proof only comes from our insecurity, our fear that what we have will be lost.

Now I can see that there is no such thing as security, and even though I many times try to reach out and hold the security I can see, I am learning to live in that insecurity more and more. And the more I live in it, the more I realize that I don’t want to live in that prison again. Even if it is painful to stay out of it.
Sometimes when I think about it, it also makes me feel that I can’t promise that eternal love to someone again, because it is a lie, an illusion. I can give all my heart to someone, but I can’t promise it for eternity. I can be everything I am in every single moment, but not create an image of what a relationship should be like and then trying to live that image. And sometimes I wonder what kind of person could actually accept that?
I know I don’t need a girlfriend. I know I can manage on my own, but even if I met someone, would they be willing to stay? I know most people in this world really want a secure relationship in the traditional sense. And I’m not sure if I can give that. I mean, it is hard enough dealing with it myself. Can I expect someone else to do it too?
Having had that thought however, I also realize that it is not up to me anyway. If I meet someone, I meet someone, and if not, well, then that’s ok too. I just don’t know what will happen, and all these thoughts is probably just a way to put limits on the limitless and grasping for that security I know is not there.

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Unlimited Money?

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

One of the questions you sometimes get, even though I can find it quite meaningless at times is: What would you do if you had an unlimited amount of money?
It is meaningless because most people would probably do something completely different if it would happen than what they answer, because they don’t know how much of a difference it would make to them. But I think it is quite interesting to see what people answer.

From three people I have gotten two different answers. One of them is that they would go on a trip, pay off their debts and maybe give some to charity, and besides that they would live just the life they already do. The other answer was that they would move to a secluded place, drink wine and party and just hang out with their friends for the rest of their lives.
The interesting thing about this question is that they in a way say something about these people. If you for instance say that you wouldn’t change your life too much, then you basically say that you are content with your life today, and therefore see no need to change anything, or perhaps that they are already looking and striving for something that they know money can’t bring them.
The other question might imply though that they are displeased with their current situation and would get out of it fast if they just had the oppurtunity. They hate to work, but they think they have to and the larger the contrast between what they want (party and hang out with friends) and what they have (spending too many hours at work) is creating a lot of suffering and also a sense that they are stuck with no way to go.

Sitting on the train on my way back from work today, it just struck me about a “third” way to answer this question, and that is not so much about what I would do if I had an unlimited amount of money, but rather what unlimited actually means.
For most people and to me at first too, thinking of unlimited got me thinking about having billions and billions of dollars and when you can’t think of more billions, you add one extra in just to be on the safe side. But it is possible to think of unlimited differently.
Unlimited means something that has no limit, and if you think of billions of billions of dollars there is actually a limit, and that limit is the limit of your thinking. And also, if the value of money is halved, you would suddenly not have unlimited amount of money anymore, but just half of what you thought of in the first place.

If you instead look at unlimited more as something that can never run out, and instead of focusing on time you focus on now, you might actually think of it as something that will always be provided no matter what. That might actually not be billions and billions, it might actually be a couple of thousand dollars, or no money at all. It might be a Knowing that whatever you need in life will be there for you, even though it might come in a way that you didn’t think of, and looking back at my life I can easily see that up until the present moment, I have always had enough, I have never died from not having food on my table, since I am alive writing this. And even though I have memories of situations where I didn’t get exactly what I wanted, and sometimes what I didn’t want at all, everything turned out quite well anyway.

In that sense, I already have an unlimited amount of money. I am actually a very priviliged and rich man. It tells me that being rich is not about having material wealth, but realizing that there is always enough for whatever need to be done.

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Detachment

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

It is easy to think that detachment is the same as indifference. I have been there, stuck in it, thinking that it will give me something. Thinking that it will make things easier to deal with. What I noticed though, was that indifference made everything a little bit more easier to deal with, but everything became dull. I was numbed out.

Detachment is nothing like indifference. It is being fully in the moment, but at the same time not being bound by it. Having a taste of it, it is nothing dull at all. It is not being numbed out. It is sitting on a chair watching the bustling activity of the world going on around you, just being ok with it. Enjoying it despite it’s ups and downs, despite being both good and bad at the same time.

Ironically, or perhaps paradoxically, it is very powerful. When you are no longer bound by things, you allow them to be whatever they are. Not a willfull allowing, you do not decide to do it, it just shows up, and you realize that it is there. And in this allowing, what used to be hard, what you so desperately tried to change suddenly either drops away or change by it’s own accord. Afterwards, you stand there foolishly realizing all your efforts were in vain.
I am not to blame. The only way to change things I have known was to force it to fit into my image of how it should be. That is true for most of us, I guess. But when that change of attitude shows up within you, the change in this world comes automatically. And it is not always a real change. Sometimes things stay the same, but they look changed to you, because your attitude has changed.
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