Be Nobody (7 page)

The ideal of a “special self” one wishes to construct through accomplishment tends always to outstrip the reality, leaving one feeling incomplete, inadequate, and continually running to try to catch up. The fear of
not
being so special after all—
the anxiety of
being ordinary
—haunts and follows even those among us who seem to have reached the very apex of our chosen endeavors, and it is endemic among those of us who, by and large, are actually pretty ordinary when it comes to our abilities and our achievements.
¹⁷

While Socrates encouraged us to “know thyself,” others have pointed out that self-knowledge is sometimes bad news! If the worth of the self we're trying to know and identify with is judged by performance-based criteria, we will usually find ourselves perpetually coming up short. We will encounter a self that is forever not special enough, a somebody who is not big enough.

Although even the most ordinary of us apparently would rather not think of ourselves as such, the burden of being special is perhaps a much heavier weight to bear.

And then there's the other side of the coin. If we're not suffering from neurotic apprehension that we're not
special enough
, we're puffed up with the narcissistic arrogance of thinking we're somehow more special than others. The desperate need to be special easily morphs into a competitive quest to feel superior in one way or another. Fearing that we'll be seen as nobody and urgently trying to be somebody, we get too big for our britches. We become too special for our own good.

As Pema Chödrön notes in the epigraph to this chapter, it's a mistake to overestimate the role and ignore who is really playing that role. It is a given that we are all unique individuals, but attaching to and elevating our uniqueness is not the recipe either for true happiness or for more comprehensive self-knowledge.

It's somewhat ironic that, driven by the belief that we'll be happy only by being distinctive, separate, and unique, we end up collectively pursuing this Holy Grail of redemptive individuality in very
similar ways. The reader might recall a scene in that Monty Python movie,
Life of Brian
, in which a mob pursues Brian, the supposed messiah, and surrounds his home. The reluctant savior appears at the window and implores the assembled masses to stop being sheep and to think for themselves. Brian shouts to them, “You're all individuals,” and the crowd, en masse, answers, “We're all individuals.”

But then one lonely little voice at the back says, “I'm not.”

And he's the one who got it right. It is truly an act of independence and freedom to recognize that we're all alike and that nobody is really more somebody than anyone else. The one who realizes he's no more special than others is the truly special one.

The emphasis on being special—embracing our uniqueness and individuality as if true self-fulfillment were to be found in
being somebody
or, even worse, being
more of a somebody
than others—can blind us to the essential ways that we are fundamentally alike, and can serve to divide rather than bring us together in our shared humanity.

Clinging to the particular and the individual precludes opening ourselves up to the general and universal. It is only by laying down the burden of individuality that we can begin to embrace our larger Self, the true core of our being that we share with all others. It is getting in touch with this universal part of ourselves that brings us joy, in large part because it relieves us of the strain of having to be somebody in particular by plugging us into what we have in common with others.

As opposed to the modern, secular emphasis on individuality (which can so easily turn into narcissistic self-absorption and prideful superciliousness), the world's spiritual traditions emphasize our
commonalities and kinship. Rather than focusing on what sets us apart, the spiritual traditions highlight what binds us together.

We can begin to receive intimations of a deeper sense of who we are—an identity that transcends the anxiety of being somebody—by recognizing that underlying our superficial differences is a great equality that links us with all others.

The Dalai Lama likes to emphasize that although we are indeed unique individuals, there are two basic desires we all share as living beings:

In our quest for happiness and the avoidance of suffering, we are all fundamentally the same, and therefore equal. . . . Despite all our individual characteristics, no matter what education we may have or what social rank we may have inherited, and irrespective of what we may have achieved in our lives, we all seek to find happiness and to avoid suffering during this short life of ours.
¹⁸

Put simply, we all want to be happy and avoid pain, and we are all exactly alike in that we have these two fundamental wishes. And this, by the way, we share with all sentient life. It matters not if you're a squirrel or a CEO, an insect or the president of the United States. Every living being just wants to attain happiness and evade suffering.

But we are also equal in that we are not very savvy about how to obtain these goals. While we all want to avoid it, suffering is endemic to life. And while we all desire true happiness, few of us are very good at actually achieving it.

•  •  •

All religions are premised on the recognition that, in the absence of spiritual training, life will just repeatedly kick our helpless asses.
Acknowledging this fact of life is the sine qua non for getting serious about finding an alternative to perpetual victimhood.

If life just flowed merrily on for us, there would be no need for self-cultivation. We could just relax and enjoy ourselves, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But, as the myth in Genesis tells us, we are not in a paradisiacal garden anymore (in case you hadn't noticed). We're in a deep, dark, dangerous forest and need guidance to find our way out.

This acknowledgment of our collective predicament was emphatically encapsulated in the first words that came out of the mouth of the Buddha after he achieved his Awakening: “
Y'all are suffering
,” he declared (loosely translated). From the point of view of a truly self-realized being, all of us, equally, are in deep doo-doo.

This is the first of the four so-called Worthy Truths in Buddhism, and the starting point for any serious attempt at a spiritual life designed to bring an alternative.
^III
“Houston, we have a problem,” as the astronauts said when they realized their spaceship wasn't working anymore. Our spaceships aren't working. We all have a problem. Our lives are shot through with difficulties, stress, dissatisfaction, and the like.

Suffering, in a word.

Oh, Buddhists, they're so negative! What do you mean “Life is suffering”? Cheer up, already! Maybe you guys should get out more—enjoy a movie or a nice dinner, or go dancing or something!

Of course, the Buddha didn't mean that life for everyone is an unremitting series of tragedies—although, for some of our fellow human beings living on this very same planet, daily life is indeed a relentless set of challenges. Billions go hungry every day; billions
do not have proper shelter, clothing, water, and medical care, while nearly equal numbers do not have basic political freedoms, educational opportunities, or even the ability to read. Billions also suffer from deep-seated psychological and emotional problems that make their daily life a living hell.

And all of us, no matter how privileged and sheltered we are from the more extreme forms of misery, are subject to misfortune. The things and people in our lives, even our own health and welfare—all of it is precarious.

In fact, we can accurately consider ourselves to be perpetually in one of two possible situations:
we are either in the midst of a disaster or between them
. These are, for all of us equally, the only two options in this life.

When we're in the middle of a disaster, the truth that life involves suffering is not debatable. We've all been there, and many of us are there right now. It's when tragedy hits that the scales of denial fall from our eyes.

When it comes to traumatic experiences, everyone has their own tales to tell. One of mine occurred early on in my adult life. My first marriage, to my high school girlfriend, took place at the tender age of eighteen. Within a year it was over. These were the days before “no fault” divorces, so, in addition to the pain of having my wife leave me, I had to endure the further torment of having my friends testify in court about what a bad husband I had been. (This was not untrue, but nevertheless it hurt to hear it publicly declared by my own friends.) By age nineteen, the hopes and expectations I had had about what an adult life would look like had been cruelly crushed. I was completely devastated and spun into a deep depression.

When we're in the middle of a disaster, the fact of suffering is viscerally felt and intellectually obvious. It is, at such times, painfully indisputable, and we don't need to be convinced then that life is
suffering. But there are two things we do need to try to remember in those difficult but potentially eye-opening circumstances.

The first is that suffering isn't just random bad luck; rather, encountering misfortune is inevitably part of living life. We all lose loved ones. We all get sick, get old, and die. Or, as the Buddha summed it up, we don't get what we want, we do get what we don't want, and we don't get to keep forever the things and people we love.

It's not some strange anomaly when tragedy befalls us. Suffering is in the very nature of our lives. We are slapped in the face with this truth when we're in the middle of the disaster, but when we're in between disasters it's important to remember that the next one (
when
it comes, not
if 
) will greet us in the same manner as the last one.

The second thing to remember—and this one is even harder than the first—is that, when the suffering nature of life whacks you upside the head,
it's not just you
. As we have seen, we all want to feel special, and when we experience catastrophes we embrace those negative experiences also as something that distinguishes, or even defines, us.
This is so unfair
—we often think at such times—
I have been singled out for this misfortune
.

When it comes our time to undergo difficulties, we all feel like poor Job in the Bible, who, shaking his fist toward the sky, demands to plead his case to the one who has unjustly rained such torment down on him.

Why me? Why me?

There's a story told in the Buddhist scriptures about a woman who has just lost her only child. She goes to the Buddha and pleads with him to restore her son to her. Surprisingly, the Buddha agrees—but under one condition. “Go to every home in the village,” he
instructs the grieving mother, “and bring me a mustard seed from the household that hasn't had a tragedy like yours.” The poor woman starts knocking on doors and, well, you can guess the outcome. Let's just say she didn't bring back any mustard seeds to the Buddha.

Suffering doesn't make you special
any more than the need to feel special makes you special. We have all been there, and we'll all be there again. Anyone who has been alive more than a few years has already taken huge hits, as any therapist, counselor, or clergyman who regularly listens to people's stories can attest. Everyone has tales of woe; we are all the walking wounded. When I hear about what people—ordinary people, everyday people, just like you and me—have gone through, I'm often amazed that any of us can even get out of bed and carry on.

No one is getting through life unscathed. We're all in the same boat, and when it comes to our susceptibility to suffering, that boat is the
Titanic
. And while the experience of disaster is ubiquitous, there are no objective criteria for measuring whose suffering is worse. There's no scale of suffering, such that yours is a 6.8 while someone else only scores 4.2.

While we might feel our own trials to be greater than others, it is necessary to realize that
suffering is subjective
. What one person finds unbearable another might skate through, and what someone might find trivial is another's unmitigated nightmare.

There's a story about a young girl who had just begun college. She had been admitted to the same school both her mother and grandmother had attended. Both mom and grandma had also been active members in one of the school's most popular sororities; indeed, membership in that sorority had sort of defined their whole lives. Even as alumnae, this girl's maternal kinfolk continued to financially support the sorority, regularly attend the annual reunions, and so on. Most importantly for the story, they instilled in the young lady how
crucially important it would be for her to also be inducted into the society of Alpha Delta Awesome, or whatever it was.

Guess what happened? She didn't get in. Having heard about how great Alpha Delta Awesome was her whole life, and knowing full well the expectations her mother and grandmother had of her carrying on this family tradition, she was utterly devastated by the rejection.

So a bit of a thought experiment here: Was the suffering that this young lady experienced as a result of being rebuffed by some damned sorority comparable to what many of us would regard as a much more serious disappointment? Is it possible, or could it even be likely, that
from her point of view
the trauma was felt as deeply as, say, another might feel having a career tank, or having something precious get stolen or lost, or even having a major health problem or being in the midst of a divorce?