*from the EPILOGUE:

MISTAKES WE OFTEN MAKE

You have seen that needs, despite apparently perfect conditions for their satisfaction, can lead people to make numerous mistakes. Now I want to discuss the hidden mechanisms (of which we are often unaware) that shape our way of thinking. They can influence all our future steps and lead us to mistakes.

Mistakes in defining perseverance

Perseverance is not equivalent to mere endurance. Some people think that perseverance can be measured by the amount of misery and tribulations we suffer and survive. I would suggest a different definition of perseverance. Perhaps it is our ability to maintain a constructive state of mind and to prevent (and thus triumph over) difficulties. Some people cannot persevere, even though nothing particularly bad is happening in their lives. I have met people whose lives treated them very generously, but paradoxically, they lost their healthy life energy and the ability to persevere. Perseverance could be the ability to prevent the wounds we inflict upon ourselves and to maintain the course of sober thought which goes beyond the surface. Many people believe that going deeper under the surface makes things complicated. Actually, looking beneath the surface can help us see how complex things are, but that does not necessarily mean they are complicated. Complex and complicated are not the same. Complex things can be organized in a very simple, logical manner. When people are unable to see the logic of complex things, they call them complicated. This is just the result of their helplessness and lack of will to understand the essence of things. In such cases, the easiest course of action is to see the apparent shape of things and embrace that beautiful superficiality. This kind of thinking often leads to misapprehensions and misunderstandings within the self and in relation to others. It often results in serious misfortune. All this requires a lot of effort and sacrifice – much more than we would ever have to make if we decided to think more deeply about things the moment we first come into contact with them.

Perseverance is often incorrectly associated with stubborn people. They might display perseverance out of spite, but it is always destructive to them and often very damaging to those around them.

Mistakes in defining the first impression

It is not at all easy to look beyond appearances. This is often made harder by what we call the first impression, something we are all prone to. First impressions are easily formed, very hard to change, and they have great power over us. The most powerful thing about first impressions is that we are not even aware we are being led by them.

I have noticed that many people confuse first impressions with intuition. This is a very slippery slope; therefore, one must be particularly careful. We often follow our first impressions, thinking they are our intuition. For some reason, most people are proud of their intuition and consider it a very precious gift. On the other hand, they are often unaware that this is just the first impression that has easily taken control over reason because it is quick and powerful. At a meeting, for the first time, many people will say that they have “a feeling, or intuitive opinion” about that person, but they will not explain what that feeling is truly based on. The fact is, they don’t know it. The answer usually lies in forgotten (but still subconsciously active) concepts, probably formed decades earlier. The most obvious example: people often meet somebody that they “like for some reason”. They cannot explain why, but they call it a feeling or intuition. If we were to examine the childhoods of these people, for example, it is quite possible we might discover that the person they have just met is very similar to someone with whom they associate good memories. Of course, this is not a rule, and we should not generalize. It is just one of the common examples that show the power of first impressions and how easy it is to make mistakes because of them.

Mistakes in defining prejudices

Prejudices do not necessarily have to be negative. The word “prejudice” should be explained more clearly here. It consists of the word “pre” (which denotes “before”), and a form of the word “judicial or judiciary” (which denotes “judging”). Thus, prejudices are opinions we hold before we truly know something or someone. Sometimes we have positive prejudices. These can be as damaging as the negative ones. Sometimes prejudices simplify our lives (we could also say, make our lives easier), by preventing us from going through an unnecessary reasoning process (in situations where it is not significant for us). But sometimes prejudices can be dangerously misleading and push us to the wrong track in our thoughts and feelings.

Thoughts and feelings are connected more deeply than we imagine. One’s attitude is, to a certain degree, conditioned by one’s thoughts, and the feelings one might have for a person or a thing are, to a great degree, conditioned by one’s attitude. If one has a positive attitude towards a person before really knowing them, the meeting will unfold more easily, and one will find it easier to develop positive feelings towards that person. This can end quite badly sometimes, as you could see while reading this book.

Mistakes in defining needs and best interests

In situations where things happen very fast, it seems to us that we never have time to think about our actions and their consequences – and it appears that precisely in these situations we act most efficiently and in a manner that’s best for us. Sometimes, it is our primary instinct that best takes care of our needs and our best interests, until we ruin it with too much thinking.

Thinking, however, is not always a process that requires time and effort – it is also an instinct that is always awake in human beings and reacts automatically to every new situation with which they are confronted. Therefore, regardless of the lightning speed or suddenness of events in people’s lives, this instinct is active – but it works “routinely”, and we are often unaware of it. Each moment human beings face different choices – beginning with the simplest ones: whether to take a taxi or use public transport, whether to accept the job offer or not… whatever one decides, the choice is made because it suits one best. It is of secondary importance how people explain, justify, misrepresent, or embellish their actions. What is important is the fact that people always do what suits them best, even though it might seem different, not just to others, but to themselves as well. Very few people are aware of this fact. On the other hand, many people will blame others for their actions or bad situations, or they don’t know who to blame (but they refuse to blame themselves).

When it comes to taking good care of oneself, it has nothing to do with loving oneself or even liking oneself. It has to do with our natural instinct to take care of ourselves. If we touch burning-hot metal, we will immediately withdraw our hand without thinking. This reaction shows that we do not always need to think to understand what is best for us. It also proves that we always take care of ourselves “automatically”, whether we think about it or not – consciously or unconsciously. This concern for our own well-being guides our every moment, action, and thought. Even the noblest and most unselfish actions stem directly from this instinctive concern. We help others because it makes us feel good. When we allow somebody to behave badly towards us, we are probably doing it to fulfill our need to feel vulnerable and fragile. There can be various reasons behind this need. For some people, their own vulnerability is evidence of their emotions, and they sometimes use it to define those emotions more easily. (We can see this in girls at the threshold of maturity, when they attempt to ascertain whether they are in love.) They often want their boyfriends to make them feel jealous and allow it, just so they can find out how they will feel in such a situation. If they feel hurt – it means they care. Sometimes this method of defining one’s own emotions is carried on in later periods of life, and in some cases, it even leads to some pathological forms of behavior.

Sometimes people tolerate all kinds of bad behavior towards them because they cannot fight the fear that has already become part of them. That is exactly why they are willing to tolerate others’ bad behavior. When fear becomes an integral part of life, then freedom from fear is seen as a loss of a life component. Therefore, some people spend their entire lives in the prison of their own fear. This is something one should fight against any way he can.

The roots of all relationships (including emotional ones, of course) lie in satisfying needs. To fulfill one’s needs, a human being primarily needs another human being. Family grew out of humans’ efforts to satisfy their needs. We can easily conclude that family and emotional life, as something natural to humans, is built on personal interest, as described in this chapter. If we wish to understand somebody’s choices and actions, or the conflicts (including the inner ones) that arise from them – we only need to understand what interests and needs were involved in the “game”. Sometimes it is difficult to recognize them, as they might be very well concealed, but they are undoubtedly there.

The fulfillment of needs (our own and/or other people’s) is the path to happiness as well as to unhappiness (sometimes other people’s, and often one’s own) – and to the impossibility of living with oneself and with others. Denying the power of human interests and needs (both real and imagined) would be similar to denying the Earth’s gravitational pull.

A proper understanding of other people and the self is impossible without understanding basic motives: needs. This enables us not only to analyze but also to continuously work on improving and humanizing our relationships.

Human needs can be divided into two main groups: needs that we satisfy automatically, led by our primordial instincts, and needs we create and mold ourselves (we think about these needs and we also strategically think about the ways of satisfying them). In many cases (it is safe to say “most cases”), you can notice that people who simply satisfy their primary needs, without too much thinking about the conditions of their own happiness, often live better and “easier” lives than those who tend to overthink their needs and conditions for happiness.

Recently, many theories have argued that the conditions for happiness are met when one fulfills their primary needs (the ones they do not need to think about much). According to these theories, if we have what we need for physical survival without being burdened by excessive difficulty or danger, we could be considered happy. I think this idea is worth our attention.

While reading these stories, you can see how an incorrect understanding of the aforementioned terms and concepts affects human life. You have also seen that the same thought is often present in the minds of different characters. This is another attempt to show that sometimes we can be very similar to each other, regardless of the time we live in or the different paths our lives take. Mr. D’s wives lived in a time much different from the one in which Anastasia M and Mrs. L lived, but you could see that they shared a lot. On the other hand, there were situations in which the same emotion led different people down completely different paths. However, the characters in this book have at least one common element: a relationship with money. The stories of these people also show how relative things are. You must have noticed that what we call comfort does not necessarily mean happiness.

*from the chapter: “THE  WONDERFUL  SIMPLICITY  OF  NEEDS  AND  THEIR  SATISFACTION:  MR. D”

As we said, D was a short man, and that was one of the reasons why he loved big things. He liked big houses, big cars, big dogs, tall women… he liked the idea of GREATNESS. The way he saw it, the purpose of marriage and family was to serve the ideal of greatness, align with great ideals, and make him greater in the eyes of the world. You see, that was important. His image had to be perfect.

Mr. D’s needs were very simple. He did not have many of them; they were not really “deep”, but they were quite strong. To any observer, it would seem as if these needs were being satisfied automatically, on their own, that life itself treated those needs as something inevitable, like physical laws that could not be denied; and so, life itself insisted on satisfaction of Mr. D’s needs, ensuring their fulfillment at all times.

D loved power and money, and that was his only true love. (Power and money also loved Mr. D, and he reciprocated with all his heart and soul.) Unlike Mr. M, who ascribed the best of qualities to himself, D never thought of himself in those terms. He did not analyze himself or his purpose: he simply lived. He did not need to define his needs; he did not need his needs to be “higher” or “deeper”. Even when he wanted to make other people’s opinions contend with his own, it was strictly for business purposes. He never entered into arguments or tried to spread any ideas, except good business proposals. D had found a far more efficient and viable method of making other people’s opinions match his own. He did it by always agreeing with them, approving whatever they would say, encouraging them with his consent – and all that without even thinking about what he just approved and agreed with. Mr. D did not want to conquer the world; he had a more realistic ambition: to build a world of his own. Even without (needless) thinking, he knew that was the only possible scenario.

 •••

 

With the same ease with which he generally went through life, Mr. D found what he was looking for. In fact, life itself found her for him (just as life was always bringing him whomever or whatever he needed and taking care of him, much like a teacher takes more care of their favorite student than of other children).

Mr. D met his second wife in the foyer of a hotel. After spending a couple of hours at the hotel with his mistress, who left discreetly later, D decided to dine at the restaurant with some friends. He lit a cigar, made himself comfortable on the sofa in the foyer, and looked through the large window so meticulously clean that the glass was invisible. Mr. D loved “glass walls” and had an enormous one in his living room. He could enjoy the view of his yard from it, while no one could see him from outside. Still, whenever he found himself behind a glass wall in a public place, he felt exposed and a bit uncomfortable. He easily managed to overcome this feeling by never forgetting that he was exposed to everyone’s eyes and by always wearing the mask he used in public places. That was making everything much easier; after all, the only possible way D could spend his moments and live his life was – with ease.

At such moments, D appeared to be thinking about something profound and important; he looked peaceful and content, with his face ever ready to smile. But this was only an appearance he had created to leave a particular impression on those around him. The truth was, at such moments, he was not thinking about anything important at all; he was just sitting there enjoying the wonderful and amazing ease of being, and everything else that life had given him. Mr. D had not been humble enough to feel any gratefulness for his life, but he was happy and satisfied. Life loved Mr. D and did not expect him to be grateful; instead, it tolerated his occasional mischief and egoism, like an indulgent parent who tolerates everything his spoilt child does.

A young woman walked into the foyer, and it seemed she was not planning to stay long. D immediately got up and walked towards her, feeling that she was about to leave. He often had a hunch about people, and he could “feel” and see them much better than they could ever “feel” and see themselves.

 

*from the chapter:

“GRAVE  CONSEQUENCES  OF  “AN  EASY  LIFE”

or

 – How  to  stop  the  needless  thinking  about  needs, the hard way –

 MRS. L

 

The weather was horrid that October day, completely in keeping with Mrs. L’s mood. That October, she became single again. No, it wasn’t a divorce. It was the death of Mr. L.

It was four in the afternoon. The rain was not heavy yet, but it was drizzling persistently. Another awful day. She was ignoring the people who came to the funeral, and to her, the graveyard seemed very quiet, giving Mrs. L what she needed so badly those last couple of years: some peace. She was standing beside the grave, surrounded by a handful of relatives and “friends” who had suddenly become “close” to her. After the funeral ended, Mrs. L wanted to be alone at her husband’s grave.

She stood there with a white rose in her hand and stared at the tombstone through her sunglasses. “J.S.L. 1961 – 2008” was the inscription on the elegant-looking tombstone. 

“Hope you like the tombstone. It’s good you didn’t choose it yourself. You never had any taste; you would have only embarrassed yourself in front of all these people. I don’t know what to tell you without sounding too honest (you’ve always hated honesty; that is why you’re dead now). If you had only listened to your doctor when he honestly told you that you were a fat pig and that you would die of a heart attack if you didn’t lose weight and stop drinking…) Well, you know what? I don’t care if you don’t like the truth. I am finally free to speak the truth. It couldn’t have turned out better. You almost killed me, you son of a bitch. You married me only because I was pretty and twenty years younger than you. You didn’t care about anything else. You never appreciated what I could give you, you disgusting bastard. Whenever you were home, you tortured me for fun. When I begged you to let me go to a therapist (to help me go through the hell YOU had created so that I could be a better wife to YOU), you mocked me. It never occurred to you to fix what you had broken. Now you are dead… And I have yet to find out if I am still alive… I’m going home now. You son of a bitch.”

She walked to the car with strong steps. She decided to maintain that appearance of strength and determination at any cost, as long as she could walk. At least it helped her look dignified, if nothing else.

•••

•

February brought particularly traumatic memories. It was on a February night that she was first thrown out of the house into the cold. Even though these memories no longer evoked strong emotions, Mrs. L felt uncomfortable on this February evening.

After a cold, mildly boring February afternoon, she decided to read a bit and then go to bed early. However, she could not calm down. Memories of cold nights spent in the freezing car kept returning, as did the image of her husband screaming “Get the hell out!” and hitting and kicking her out through the front door.

She was in bed for hours, unable to sleep, upset. She was getting overwhelmed by a wave of destructive energy that she could not fight despite hours of struggle. Impulsively, she made her way to the cabinet in which she kept medications and without thinking swallowed a handful of sleeping pills. It was only when she returned to bed that she realized what she had done, but it was too late to call anyone. She was too embarrassed to call Mr. D at this hour and tell him what she had done (because only a weak person would do something like that, and Mr. D had no sympathy for the weak). She did not want to disappoint him. But if she were to die of an overdose, he would certainly be disappointed. She had to call someone. The ambulance? A taxi? She was already feeling like she was shutting down. With a heavy hand, she grabbed her cell phone and called that “kid”. If anyone was capable of running to her rescue immediately, it was him. She managed to drag herself to the front door and unlock it. The kid appeared within minutes, inexplicably quickly (or it only seemed that way to her). He carried her to bed and shook her, trying to wake her up:

“What did you do?!”

Then he saw the empty bottle of sedatives beside the bed, and then another, slightly different bottle, empty as well. He was seized by panic, but managed to pull himself together and call the ambulance. He told them to come immediately and asked what he could do to help her in the meantime. He did exactly as they told him. In that horrific situation, while he was saving her life, he felt pleased with the fact that he was needed and useful.

She stared at him helplessly, and he was overcome with a feeling he had never experienced before. What he was feeling was hope that her stone heart could become a little softer and warmer. With nearly no strength, she whispered:

“Hey kid…”

“Yes?” he said, tearful-eyed.

“Get the hell out. I want to die alone.”