The World As Being Put There For Your Gratification

Step back a moment and see how you view everything and everybody through the prism of how they fulfill your wants and needs. The problem in doing this is that others become mechanisms that you use to obtain something you want. You tend to view the world as being put there for your gratification, and you take what you can when you can. Whatever prevents you from doing this is viewed as an obstacle to be overcome. To get what you want, you start to divide up the universe into us and them. In the us group are people you identify with in some way, people who are well disposed to you and whom you can trust. For most people, this would include family and friends and members of certain groups to which they belong. Them is everybody else. My father said to me, I saw those records you put out. Why are you selling them so cheaply? You’re selling six records for four and a half dollars? What are you, against capitalism or something? I tried to think how I could explain it to him. My father was a lawyer, so I said, Dad, didn’t you just try a case for Uncle Henry? He said, Yeah. I asked, Was it a tough case? He said, Oh, you bet.

Forgive Yourself

Are you out of your mind? The smaller the circle of people you think of as us, the more difficult your life will be and the more problematic your relations. Your attitude will communicate itself to others and make them more accommodating to you as well. It starts a virtuous upward spiral, and that is precisely what you want. There is one way in which every single person is similar to you. Everyone is desperately seeking happiness. Everyone is thinking, I want happiness. May I find it now and ever more. But your normal reaction is to examine how others can assist you in your quest. If you’re conscious that everyone has the same desire, then you find yourself gravitating toward being of service instead of being demanding. Pick a person each day, and on some days, choose someone you don’t particularly care for. See if you can expand your circle of acceptance to include that person. How can you be of service to that person in the common quest of all human beings? Do it as sincerely as you can and observe what it does to your emotional state.

Fundamental Imbalances

Other people are not put on this earth to be mechanisms for you to achieve your ends. Think about this until it really sinks in. For the most part, they were high executives at financial service companies, and many ran hedge funds or private equity firms. The reason for this was also noted. The newcomers were able to buy some of the toys of the ultrarich, but not all. The chauffeured limousines they already had, but they couldn’t afford the private jets or the helicopter to whisk them over the snarled traffic to summer homes in the Hamptons. They had the apartment in the city, but not one with two formal drawing rooms and separate maid quarters. And they wanted all of this so much that they went into hock to get it. As high as their income was by conventional standards, they wound up enduring as much financial stress as they had when they took big loans to pay for business school. These were not dummies. They had elite educations and had survived grueling rounds of screening at various colleges and prestigious companies. But that is precisely how they felt when members of the group they aspired to join surrounded them.

Little By Little

Don’t cluck your tongue in sympathy or sorrow. Our entire economic system is based on the notion that things will bring you happiness. Beer commercials depict friends reveling in each other’s company. Cosmetic advertisements show newly glamorous women capturing handsome men. They don’t explicitly say, If you buy this, you’ll feel like that, but they don’t have to. The powerful imagery they create says it better than words ever could. Justin was just a kid, and his mom and dad had been fighting all the time. Then one day his dad wasn’t there anymore. He didn’t understand why and burst out crying at odd intervals, so his mom took him a long distance away to what she called a working farm. He was thrilled. The farmer’s son Greg was his own age, and they played together all day and had a ball. One day they played a game in which they collected all of the pasty yellow stuff that dotted the field to see who could get the most in the shortest time. Justin raced all over, but Greg was quicker and got more of it. It was on his third trip that his mother came out and let out a horrified scream. Grabbing him by the ear, she took Justin to the hand pump and made him strip right there. She then poured buckets of water over him and marched him straight to the bathroom and into the shower. Did you grimace uncomfortably as you read this story? Did it hit too close to home, and are you, at some level, rebelling against the comparison? There are times in all of our lives when we see with crystal clarity that we are stuck on a treadmill that’s going nowhere. One common occasion is when we’re confronted with the death of a beloved relative or close friend. Think of the last time this happened to you. Do you recall the poignancy of the occasion? How quickly you understood the insignificance of whatever else was bothering you at the time? How suddenly your incessant quest for more stuff was revealed as a futile waste of time? In India, there is a term for such realization. It can be loosely translated as the dispassion of the cremation ground. Am I saying that whatever you’re engaged in is a waste of time?