How kindness transcends everything: a real-life example.

When I was a young woman, I didn't have my life sorted - surprise, surprise!
I tried as well as I could to make sense of everything, manage meaningful and less meaningful relationships, and failed as often as I succeeded.

During that time, a family that wasn't mine opened their heart and their house to me.
They welcomed me whenever I asked. They lived in a very large, semi-renovated house in Normandy, had 5 children of their own (aged between 1 and 8 when I met them the first time) and were busy people.

Yet, whenever I phoned them to ask "can I come to visit?" the answer was always "yes, of course!". When the guest room that I eventually considered as my own was already occupied, they would make up a bed in the office. Once I slept in one of the kids' rooms, when even the office was already taken.

She would pick me up from the train station (my first experience of people-movers, as the five kids of course had to come along) and take me home.

Often there were other, always interesting people at the dinner or lunch table; sometimes their family, most of the time friends or people in need of connection, like me.

The food would be in the french tradition of entree, main, cheese and dessert. Nothing fancy usually, but healthy. After some months/years, I would feel so much at home that I would often cook - not that I was brilliant at it, but it just wasn't their main talent let's say.

What was their strong point was their unwavering welcome. I wouldn't compare myself to a stray cat (actually cats were not too welcome in their house, their only fault) but if I was not lost, then at least I hadn't found myself yet.

They would love me as I was, opening their house, and their hearts me. Why? Well, because that was the kind of people they were, and possibly also because of their Christian faith.

And that is my point today. They were very catholic. So much so, that they would travel quite a bit every Sunday to go to mass in a church that offered mass in Latin (none of that "new-fangled Vatican II idea" of mass in French for them). I never went with them and they never expected me to.

They had certain views on what was the right thing to do (I'm pretty sure my boyfriend stories were not quite what they were expecting for their children). Some people may have thought of them as "fundamentalist Catholics". Yet always in my often robust discussions with them (I loved playing the devil's advocate even then) they displayed tolerance and love. Their arguments would be well-thought through, never dogmatic, often convincing.

More than that, the life they were leading, the way they lived their faith in a tradition of welcome to anybody who needed their hospitality or their help, told me so much more about them than their preference for mass in Latin.

To me, they embodied the greatest aspect of Christian tradition: loving the other, as different as "the other" may turn out to be. (I have met others, Muslims, who live by the same tenet, but that is a story for another post).

My point is that those people were living in a way that added greatly to the general store of goodness in this world; and as much as their religious convictions were important to them, their lived tolerance was more important than dogma.

I can't say I quite live up to their example. My "do-gooding" always remained small-scale.
But whenever I feel desperate about the state of this world, I remember how one family made a difference in the lives of many, mine amongst others. And it gives me hope about the future.

The secret to happiness

I am often asked about this, so today I will reveal it to you:

The secret to happiness lies in forgetting oneself in the pursuit of something bigger.

There.
Simple, right?
Too simple?

I've spent years observing others, listening to them, analysing and processing - all rather rational pursuits, I don't move very much in the "touchy-feely new-age" kind of world, and I promise I'm not there now either.

Some people will say that happiness is setting up and running little electric trains.
Others that it's about bagging the latest bargain at the sales.
But these are only little things; this happiness is temporary.

I did mention something bigger.

For Bob Brown (the Australian Senator) it is the protection of the environment.
For Mother Theresa it was caring for lepers and orphans.

For some of the nicest, warmest, and happiest people I know personally, it has always been about caring for others (you can read about them here).

For me, it is about meeting the other. It is not always people, but it mainly is (though cats and trees have also their place). It is about being allowed into someone's life, about sharing a moment.

When I do, when I truly listen, when I truly hear the other, my life becomes at the same time unimportant, and valuable.

When I meet "the other", whatever their shape - when I make a difference through the simple act of being present, of witnessing - my life has meaning.

And for that brief and sometimes not so brief moment, I am happy, because I know that I have positively impacted someone else's life.

When I put these moments end to end, multiplying them, that is my way to "be happy".
When I forget about "wanting to be happy", that is when I find it.

For me it takes truly being with others to forget about myself.

What does it take for you?
The answer to that question is your secret for happiness. Happy search!

How your judgement of others tells us more about you than about them...

Have you ever noticed what bothers you about others?
Which bits grate you the most?
Odds are, it is something that is part of your shadow side too...

When we complain about others paying too little tax, we are really saying that we feel we pay too much.

When we condemn a whole people in one sweeping sentence, we show how prejudiced we are.

Each time we criticise someone for how they look or how they speak, we only ever say "this is my judgement, my opinion, my taste and YOU don't match it".

Let me give you some examples:

Your mother tells the 25-year old you that it is unacceptable for you to dress "like this"; is that comment really about caring on how you look, or is she worrying about what the neighbours will think of you, and hence, of her?

Your husband tells you you need to hold your cutlery in a different way, because is not "upper-class" the way you do it; is that really about your manners, or rather on how it reflects upon him?

You find that "Asian people" are buying up property in your suburb, and you say "they didn't even say hello to me, they are so rude". Is that comment about their politeness, or rather possibly about your difficulty to accept a changing neighbourhood?

It even goes further than that. In our relationships, when we complain about the other's faults, it is more likely to be a reflection on our needs, rather than their shortcomings.

It is about what we expect from the other.

When we want to a certain lifestyle, and expect the other to deliver it.
When we want to feel safe, and expect the other to "make us feel safe".
When we want to be happy, and expect the other to "make us happy".

How do we change that though?

As always, it starts with becoming aware that we are doing it.
It is about recognising our needs and wants, and asking whether we're putting the burden of satisfying them on someone else.

It is also about realising that when others criticise us, it is quite likely to be about them, their baggage, their story.

My work as a therapist is to support you becoming aware of such patterns.
To help you see if you're avoiding responsibility, or, on the contrary, if you are taking on responsibility for other people's wants and needs to a degree that doesn't allow you to flourish.

It's only when you become aware of your pattern that you get back the choice to change it...