Category: Relationships

On exercising the best of our humanity: hospitality toward strangers


I am a ‘softy’ and I am proud to be a ‘softy’ nowadays – this was not always the case!  I cry (sometimes buckets) when I watch a movie (e.g. Gandhi, Schindlers List) that shows the best of our humanity in action.  I cry when I read a story where someone has put their humanity into action (e.g. Three Cups of Tea).  I cry when I listen to someone who shares an inspiring story with passion.

Just now I found my humanity touched.  I found myself inspired and I found myself with tears of joy running down my face.  What brought that on?  I invite you to experience it for yourself.  Watch this TED talk by William Ury: The walk from Yes to No

I believe that most of us are good people – loving and caring human beings.  Most of us really do not want to create conflict or be immersed in conflict.  Yet it happens we find ourselves in the midst of conflict before we know it.  This talk provides a simple but not simplistic path  that we can all follow.  It may even inspire many of us to be hospitable to strangers and not just our close friends and family.

I love the bit about walking together – side by side.  How true it is that when I walk with a fellow human being I do not feel threatened, I even look forward to the experience.

People are more important than things, than religion, than politics, than any ideology


A little while ago I wrote a post People Are More Important Than Things

Since that post I have done some thinking and it strikes me that there is a whole area of stuff that I am attached to, you are attached to, we are attached to and it is not things.  What is that stuff?  Ideology, here is the definition:

ideology refers to habits of mind – beliefs, assumptions, expectations etc – which are placed upon the world in order to give it structure and meaning and which then serve to direct our social and political activities.

This week I read an article on the Guardian:  Repeal Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law and asked myself what is it about us that we place so little value on flesh and blood like us – our fellow human beings – and so much faith in the intangible.  So much that we are willing to kill people if they utter the wrong words. Is our faith so little that as soon as someone questions our beliefs, our practices then seek to silence them, to belittle them, even to kill them.

Or take this post at the Adaptive Path blog: The Pernicious Effects of Advertising and Marketing Agencies Trying to Deliver User Experience Design.  What is particularly noteworthy is the 87 comments or so that this post has generated.  How interesting that so many of them are either attack or defend the point of view that has been put forward.  It is particularly interesting to see the response of the people who feel they have been attacked – they attack back.  Yet, if you read the article, the author is not attacking any specific person.  He is pointing out the system structure that drives specific sets of behaviour.  And it is clear that he disagrees with that behaviour.

What a wonderful world we can create together if we all made the following rule, the primary rule, the golden rule:  Life (people, animals, plants) is more important than things, religions, politics, caste-systems or any other ideologies. Lets cherish each other: lets see, create and bring into being the best in each other.  Please watch this from 4 minute video where  Viktor Frankl (a concentration camp survivor) shares his view of man.  Please listen and really hear what he says!

“If we take man as he really is then we make him worse.
If we overestimate him……overrate man, then we promote him to what he really can be.
So we have to be optimists idealists in way so we wind up as the true realists”

This post is directly aimed at you, my friend, Maz Iqbal!

Each one is doing the best that he/she can at every possible moment


In ordinary – taken for granted every day living – we assume that each of us is in charge of our lives: what I think, what I say, what I do, what I do not say, what I do not do…

In ordinary living we tend to be light on ourselves and heavy on others.  We judge our behaviour and the outcomes we generate by our intentions.  Yet we do not give others the same benefit: we judge them solely by the outcomes they generate.  We let ourselves off the hook and cast stones at others – through our thinking, through our words and through our actions.

Some of us do not differentiate: we are equally harsh on ourselves as we are on others. Some of us are masters of another game: condemning, criticising, blaming others and later spending time feeling guilty and being withdrawn: our loved ones pay the price twice – first when we criticise them and attach their human dignity and second when we withdraw from them rather than put balm on their wounds – the wounds we inflicted.

Over the last few weeks, here and there I have been  at my worst.  I verbally attacked one of my sons and later forgive myself as I was not feeling well. Yet, I have not rested as I know that there is no excuse for what I did.  I did what I did because I was imposing my view of the world on the situation at hand and my son’s role in that situation.  He just wasn’t playing the role that I expected him to play.  And he was wasting my time.  There it is: my time is valuable and how dare he waste my time!

The ExtraOrdinary path is right here in front of me, of you, of us.  It simply involves changing our worldview, living into the following:

  • Each of us is being run 24/7 by our operating system – the operating system that we have inherited through our genes, our culture, our environment, our upbringing;
  • Each of us is doing the best that it is capable of doing at every moment;
  • Each of us  is best able to develop and modify the operating system that runs us through mindfulness (meditation, time out, reflection) and through connection with our fellow human beings;
  • Our fellow human beings can best help us to upgrade our operating system by being strictly gentle with us – consistently sharing with us in a gentle manner the impact of our actions on their lives

“People are more important than things!”


Over the last two days we have been blessed by the company of our good friend Analia and her beautiful daughter Clara. 

Analia comes from Brazil where people, relationships, family and friends really matter.  They are an ingrained part of life: non-one has to teach Brazilian social skills.  Analia is one of the most wonderful human beings that I have a good fortune to know.

When I am with Analia I feel totally comfortable.  No pretense!  None is necessary as I know that she loves me – she accepts me just as I am whilst listening to me as a  person up for being a good human being.  Straight talk flow between us.  Why?  Because all the stuff that gets in the way of straight talk is simply not there.

Over the years I have wondered why I love Analia, why I feel totally comfortable in her company and in her home with her family.  Today I got my answer.  As she was leaving she asked Clara (her daughter) to “give uncle Maz a hug and say thank you”.  Clara is only a little girl and she was understandably more concerned with finding a missing Lego piece from the set she had built.  So Analia asked her again and Clara continued to look for her missing Lego piece.  Then Analia said something that struck at the heart of my soul:

“Clara, people are more important than things!”

Yes, Analia you are absolutely right.  Yet, we, in the west, have put things first and people last.  They way we live things are more important than people.  And that is a terrible way to live.

I thank you my wonderful friend to getting me present to your philosophy, what makes you great.  You live your truth: People are more powerful than things!

My commitment is to live your truth.  Thank you for your gift.

Behind our indifference lies deep caring


Yesterday my young daughter and I cooked a meal together; she is keen to learn cooking by doing cooking.  Then we all sat down at the table to eat together – something we do every meal.  As we were eating my sons said they liked the food and thanked us for cooking it.  Then I made the mistake of saying “As you eat this meal think of the millions of people like you, like us, who are starving”.

My youngest son said that he didn’t like me mentioning the poor, the starving, when we are eating as it makes him upset.  And he cannot then enjoy his food.  My wife said pretty much the same thing.  Whilst I was at first very upset about this as I considered their viewpoint I selfish one, I am now grateful to them as they have opened my eyes.

There is tremendous violence, oppression, destruction, poverty and suffering going on around the world.  Even here in the UK there are people who do not have enough money to feed themselves and their children, so some of them go without to feed their children; there are young women tricked into coming over to the UK and then forced to work as prostitutes and the list goes on….And most of us, for most of the time, close our eyes.  Why?

Not because we do not care.  It is precisely because we care AND we believe ourselves to be helpless to make any impact on this ocean of suffering that we close our eyes, we close our ears, we close our hearts.  Some of us go as far as being hostile to / critical of those that suffer: if they are suffering then they must be responsible.  Why do we do this?  By living into this view we can distance ourselves from the pain – our pain.

I care, you care, we care: if we did not then it would make no difference if we invited in the suffering into our lives.  And yet we feel helpless so what can we do?  This reminds me of the story about a fellow walking along the beach littered with thousands of starfish.  He notices a young woman on the beach who is doing some kind of yoga exercise.  As he draws near he realises that she bends down, picks up a starfish and then throws the starfish into the ocean. And again, and again…

The man laughs.  He walks up to the young woman and tells her that the whole beach is covered with starfish.  She cannot possibly save them all: she is not in a position to make any difference at all.  The young woman picks up another starfish and whilst throwing “it” (a horrible world for any living creature) into the ocean says: “I made a difference to that starfish.”

The lesson is clear for those of us who are ready to step into the lesson.  We can act according to our ability.  We can simply be aware of and present to the violence, destruction, suffering that is going on all around us.  It may not help others and it certainly will help us: we can become more grateful for our circumstances – our life of plenty.

Mother


Mother, you gave birth to me – you gave me life and all that come with it,

Mother, you carried me when I was too weak to walk,

Mother, you put your life at risk many times to save mine,

Mother, your courage, your determination, your love is what brought me from Kashmir to the UK,

Mother, in that act alone you changed my life, my destiny,

Mother, you believed in me and encouraged me to do well at school.

Mother, when I was in hospital you told me “Son your body is not strong, your mind is strong – use your mind to make your life”,

Mother,with that instruction you changed my life a second time,

Mother, I remember you would either bring me a cup or tea or  tell me to go to sleep when I was studying late for my O and A levels,

Mother, you nursed me and brought me back to health when I damaged my knee at University,

Mother, this week you welcomed me to your home and even though you are not able to look after yourself you still looked after me,

Mother, I struggle to find a way to look after you and at the same time take care of my responsibilities to my wife and children,

Mother, when I think of you and your situation I feel helpless, I feel ashamed – no matter what I do, it is not right, it is not enough,

Mother, being helpless is what I struggle with the most and that is why I keep you out of mind,

Mother, I love you, I hope that you can forgive me for not doing for you what you have always done for me,

Mother, my heart tears and my eyes swim with tears.

As you travel through life leave behind you the footsteps of kindness


Last week one of my sons was dealing with a friendship issue.  I found myself telling him that there are all kinds of friends: friends you play sports with, friends you hang around with,  friends you invite home, friends you go on holidays with, friends you share your stuff with and friends that you’d die for.

My son asked me a questioned that I had never thought about: “Papa which friend would you die for?”  Without any effort the answer came: my friend Tim.  Now why is that?

Over 20 years ago Tim learnt that my young brother and sister were coming down to London to spend a week with me – holiday.  Tim not only offered me his prized possession – his Saab – he got me insured on it, he drove it down to my place, showed me how to drive it and left me the keys.  Not once did I think about asking for his Saab, nor did I ask for it.  It all came from him – an act of pure kindness.

This incident got me thinking of another incident some years ago.  At my aunt’s funeral I was astonished to find my young brother as one of the pole bearers.  This is a young man who has kept himself aloof from his aunts, uncles and cousins for many many years.  So I asked him why he was present at the funeral and why he had insisted on carrying her coffin and seeing it put into the ground.

He told me that when he was young (age five or less) his foot hurt.  He had told our mother and father and they had paid no attention to his pain.  Yet when he happened to go with our mother to visit this aunt she noticed that there was something wrong with his leg.  She took a look at it and figured out that his ankle was sprained.  So she took him – right away – to see someone who specialised in putting that kind of thing right.  To cut a long story short: my aunt had removed his pain, his suffering and he remembered that for some 30  years!

When I die all that will remain is the footsteps that I have left in the memories of my fellow human beings.  Let those footsteps be the footsteps of generosity, kindness and compassion illustrated by my friend Tim and by my aunt.

Criticism doesn’t work, NVC can work


I am perplexed.  Why is it that when we want to get a change of behaviour from a fellow human being we condemn, criticise and blame?  What makes us think that these behaviours will create affinity with our fellow human beings and get them to give us what we want?

As a human being I want to get along with my fellow human beings- especially those that are in my inner circle.  Not only do I want to get along I want people to like me.   I want to be included not excluded. I want people to think highly of me.  Even that is not enough I want affinity even intimacy with a select few. That means I want to close the emotional and the physical gap between me and the people that matter to me.

If I am a normal human being what do I do – automatically?  I judge. I criticise.  I condemn.  Who do I criticise?  The people closest to me – family, friends, neighbours, colleagues etc. What does that get me?  Distance – the one that is criticised withdraws, sulks, becomes aggressive or waits for the day that he can pay back in kind.  Why does that happen?  Most human beings are fragile: even without being aware of it we are constantly looking for approval, we detest being put down and we strive to avoid or punish those that put us down.

It strikes me that if I want to create affinity with another human being then the tools to use are acknowledgement, praise and saying ‘thank you’.  These tools are particularly important if there is any distance in the relationship and I want to reduce that distance. Only when the distance is closed is the time right to ask for what I want in a way that works.   Marshall Rosenberg has developed such a method: NVC – Non Violent Communication; he has written a book called Non Voilent Communication.

So why is it that whilst excellent communication methods exist to bridge the gap between me and you, you and I continue to use the tried and tested methods that create greater distance and greater enmity?

I forgive you as I get that I do not often / always practice what I preach.  Can you grant me what you grant yourself often – forgiveness and acceptance?

If you want family then remove the tv


The tv broke down some days ago.  I was delighted as I had been hoping that it would break down and I could access to using the living room – my favourite room for reading, talking and just relaxing.  For one of my children – the oldest – the world had suddenly caved in – he is addicted to watching tv.  For the youngest – it is a survivable pain.  And the middle one – who is used to entertaining himself – is not that bothered.

Here is what I have noticed:

  • we talk a lot more with each other and we laugh a lot more;
  • we play games with each other;
  • the children help with household chores – like cooking meals;
  • the children spend more time in their bedrooms doing private activities like reading or drawing;
  • the children go outside more – like taking walks;
  • there is a lot less fighting in the house as there is less to fight about; and
  • I feel at home again.

I am quite clear that introducing or removing television from the home is a revolutionary act.  With it in the house, it becomes the most important thing and the people in the house become slaves to it.  By removing it, our family – all of us – have became creators, authors of our lives.  And we work much better as a family.

Our true nature is loving kindness


Two days ago I was driving on a main road going 40mph when I saw a pheasant cross the country road.  Instantly, without thinking, I braked whilst intently watching the pheasant cross the road.  When the pheasant made it across the road I noticed that my whole being relaxed – my body relaxed, my breathing eased and the whole of me smiled.

Later that day I went to see my solicitor.  When I left his office it was raining and the rain got harder as I walked to the car park.  Whilst I was walking to my car I noticed a couple of people who were arriving in the car park.  So I opened my car, retrieved the ticket – as it had several hours of parking left – and walked over to man who had just got out of his car and offered him the ticket.  He accepted the ticket, said nothing, looked puzzled.  As he accepted the ticket I felt happy – I had stepped out of my self centred world and did something for someone else.

This one act of kindness lifted my spirits.  What did it cost me?  If I had been selfish I would have paid 60p for the car park ticket.  Instead I had chosen to contribute to a fellow human being and so had paid for a £1.20 ticket knowing that I did not need car parking for several hours.  So it cost me 60p to lift my spirits – to put a smile on my face and to create a kinder world for an instant.   A bargain.

When I examine these two incidents and some of the other incidents that make me proud of myself I get that my true nature is one of loving kindness towards life.   Whilst this is so it is not obvious that it is so – not to myself and not to others.  Why?  Because the mirror gets covered with the dust of every day living until it is no longer possible to see the mirror – only the hardened dirt is evident.

How many of my fellow human beings are in the same boat as me?  I choose to believe that the true nature of almost all of my fellow human beings is loving kindness.  And when they are not exhibiting it, it is only because they are trapped in the daily life of surviving and fixing.  Just like me.

How I transformed my mood in an instant and other learnings


Yesterday my wife and I sat down to talk.  She called the meeting as she was upset with me. As we sat down to talk my wife shared her frustrations:

a) I had made a decision – to cancel paytv – that impacted the family without consulting her;

b) I had been impatient with her in front of my mother and that had caused her pain as it had ruined a special occasion;

c) I had not done enough to win her back – to let her know that I got her pain and that I was doing everything in my power to make amends.

Well we talked.  More accurately my wife talked about her upset and my insensitivity to her needs.  When I mentioned that I rarely made any decisions without consulting her.  It did not count.  What mattered was that I had said that I was not going to renew the paytv subscription.  When I said that I had been floating a kite to see her reaction.  I was told that I should not play games.  So I gave up and just listened to her frustration.  Whilst I was listening to her criticism of me I got that when you want something from someone criticism is not the path to take.  A better, much better, path is to share your pain in a way that leaves the listener touched and inspired to take action. I got that whilst I know the route to take, I rarely take it when I am focussed on myself and my concerns.

Then we got on the the major upset: my being a jerk – once – at my mothers house when my wife wanted my help in presenting her gifts to my mother.  I listened to the upset and I explained that once I had realised I had been a jerk I had apologised.  First I had apologised on the phone as we were in different locations. And when I came home, I apologised and given her a hug.   In my wife’s world that just did not count.  I had not done enough for her to get that I had gotten her pain. And importantly I had not humbled myself enough – to show that I was truly sorry. I did not react well to this initially – I mentioned all the actions I had taken since being a jerk to make up for being a jerk.  In my wife’s book that simply did not count.

The more I put forward my point of view the more my wife resisted my point of view.  I got that when someone wants to talk he/she wants the listener to listen.  Yet the natural reaction of most listeners is to defend.  By defending they invite more attack.

At this point there were two forks on the road. Continue to defend and my wife would continue to resist.  Or give up my point of view and accept my wife’s point of view.  I choose the second.  As I started listening to my wife go over the matter again I started to feel down, really down.  I was feeling down as I was feeling sorry for myself: trapped, unappreciated, misunderstood…. And the more my wife talked the more down I became.  I even wondered if it was worth living – and convinced myself it was not.

Then in an instant I switched to a completely different state. A state where I felt powerful, in control, in a position to grant a request.  How did I do this?   I remembered a passage that I had read earlier that day.  The passage had drawn my attention to the fact that one can either be a master or a slave.  A master (of self) chooses his/her mood irrespective of the circumstances he/she faces.  The slave is the slave because he/she reacts to circumstances – his response, his state of mind depends on external circumstances.  If the circumstances are favourable then he is happy.  If they are not then he is unhappy, negative, feeling oppressed and so forth.

On remembering the passage I chose to be the master of myself.  I chose to be in a good mood.  I chose to grant my wife her views without any resentment.  I chose to give my wife a hug.

That choice brought the upset and the conversation to an end.  We  both walked away from the conversation content.  We walked to the bedroom and I gave her a hug until she fell asleep.  It turned out that all she wanted as me to listen to her powerfully and gracefully.  To get her perspective – as a master not as a victim.  And above all she wanted a hug – to know that I still love her.  I went to sleep amazed that I had changed my state in an instant – really in a second or two.