Wellness Wednesday.... Wisdom

Shortly after I went to Thailand the first time, I recognized how culturally conditioned I'd become. When I made the decision to become a part of Thailand rather than apart from it, a lot of my assumptions came up and bit my behind.

While being called "blue-eyed Thai girl" and all that made me feel all warm and fuzzy since it represented acceptance, I felt ersatz. I wanted to understand the depths and find all the hidden corners. Thousands of years of history and I knew next to nothing about it. I wanted to lift the rug and find out what might be hidden beneath, both good and bad.

I discovered how hard it was to get beyond cultural conditioning. I was raised in an environment where a lot was assumed and I didn't realize how arrogant, how colonialist, I could be until I forced myself to live in another culture as one of its own. I didn't know idealism could be another blind spot. Without realizing it, I was shoving my ideas down everyone else's throat (gee, just like I do on this site! Wow!) , saying and believing I knew what is best for everyone and how they should run their lives individually, their communities or their country.

It was kind of like Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady". Why can't a woman be more like a man? Why couldn't they be more like me?

We get really attached to these things, this conditioning, until we realize it's not quite so wise after all.

One of the problems most of us develop is compulsivity. Obsessiveness. There are so many "shoulds". When you create ideals, they become compulsive and the shoulds start in earnest. Idealism is nice.. but it's not real life. I don't think any of us should give it up but we need to recognize its limitations. The feeling that we always have to be in motion, that we always have to be making things better, that we always have to have more to do, more to be, more to have.

It's not that the shoulds are necessarily wrong. Most shoulds are rooted in truth. Of course we can be nicer, be kinder, be more open, better-natured and so on. If things were perfect, I'd be perfect, too. I would be ideal and my society would be ideal. We would all be perfect. Then there would be nothing more to do. But that's not the way life is.

That is where 'conventional wisdom' begins to fall apart. It sets us up for failure and constant dissatisfaction. It sets us up for constant unhappiness. We set ourselves up to believe something can always be better than this, whatever this is.

Sooner or later, we come to realize that the very things we spend our lives craving are all subject to change and loss. Everything changes and everything eventually ends. Then we suffer.

It seems to me that the better part of wisdom is that recognition.. and knowing that what we have is right now, this moment, and what we have is each other. And that is perfect enough.

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