A Great Life Gift from a Clumsy Friend. by A. Paul Miller

Sometimes people can teach us great wisdom and they have no idea the gift they have just given us.

Have you ever had trouble letting go, it might be a thing or an event, perhaps a relationship, things you call memorabilia that others might call clutter or perhaps an object that is lost or broken. The strange thing is at the time we do not see we are refusing to let go, but just that we want something back.

My first introduction to a person who was just ‘born clumsy’ was at University. Of course, I did not use that nomenclature then as I had no idea anyone like that could exist. In the beginning, he was just a friend who now and again would knock things off a table almost without being aware that they were there. Then I noticed how the ‘space’ that he was in at any moment was not just big enough for him to function in without hitting anything. Years passed and by the time the last year at University arrived our small group of friends had mastered the art of throwing themselves between him and whatever needed protecting. Whether that meant moving things into the middle of a table away from the edge or placing ourselves bodily between the object and him.

The years went on and now I am in another country and I found myself with another person who just seems to knock, bump or break things around herself. Just like the first person I was fortunate enough to have in my life, she turned out to be another great friend. Over the years I watched with fascination as I saw things get lost, dented or broken. Then my life took quite an unexpected turn and suddenly I find that I am no longer an electronic engineer but a meditation and yoga teacher and a therapist. I had now started to look at myself and the world around me differently. I still noticed my friend knocking things over and still found myself inwardly rolling my eyes whenever it happened, but in a less judgmental way. One day she even admitted to me she was born clumsy. That surprised me as that was the first time I had heard her admit it.

On one particular day, she broke something and said “Ah well” and carried on. Suddenly an avalanche of thoughts and awareness rushed into my conscious.

“How could she be so blasé about what had just been broken?” I wondered. Then I thought “I guess if you can admit to yourself that you were born clumsy then you have to adopt an attitude of ‘Oh well’ otherwise you’d always be berating yourself.”

“Wait, a minute”, I thought to myself, “that would then mean she would have to have adopted an attitude of non-attachment and non-dependency to objects. If not then she’d always be chastising herself. Wow, there’s an important lesson here for me to learn” I suddenly realized.

The more I reflected on it the more I realized that it was not about not caring what just happened to the object, but about not being attached or dependent to what happened.  I realized in that moment I needed to watch my friend more closely to see how she coped, so I could learn what she had to teach me. I noticed that while she was regretful in the moment, in the next moment she had moved on and had left the incident in the past.

This new awareness kept floating around in the back of my mind for several weeks until, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, I happened to be washing up one of my favorite wine glasses and broke it in the sink. As I noticed what had just happened an awareness moved from a dusty corner in my conscious to the forefront of my mind.

I knew I was sad that it had broken but suddenly found myself thinking “Everything has its time and I have enjoyed using it, but I guess that is that!” This new perception came about because I suddenly remembered the lesson I had learned from my friend.

In that moment I also realized that I needed to check that just how solid was this new awareness. I remembered a perception I use “I can fake my thoughts… but not my feelings.”

To be sure I was not kidding myself I checked in on my feelings to see if I had been sad for a moment but it had now passed and I had once again moved back to equanimity… and I had!! I must admit I was impressed with myself. “Wow”, I thought to myself, “I must be learning something and have taken a small step into greater awareness.”

Having just proved to myself that I could adopt this philosophy of non-attachment to an object, albeit a simple case - baby steps I call them. I suddenly thought could I take this new awareness and apply it to life? I remember reading in Siddhartha by Herman Hesse that the Buddha talks about not getting attached to impermanent things, this reference is to events, situations and objects.

“How could I apply this philosophy to life though?” I wondered.

I remembered back to one of my early Renovatio Sutras about judgment. “Allowing is about not judging… if you judge then you are not allowing”. From this I understood that while I could allow myself an assessment of whatever had or was happening (albeit good or bad), I must not drag any subsequent draining thoughts and feelings into my future like a ball and chain I did not want to let go of.

This I thought was a good start to applying it to my life, but I needed a little more. Another perspective that helped me to act on this new awareness was to remember how animals also have this philosophy of non-attachment. I had learned this during a stress reduction class I had been teaching and it had come up when discussing how stress has a different effect on humans and animals.

When an animal gets stressed, for example, a cat chased by a dog, the cat is stressed at the moment it is running away, but once it has avoided the dog it quickly calms down and goes back to homeostasis, that is, its ‘chilled out place’ (I can say this because I love cats, I have a friend who loves dogs so they might use the term ‘aloof’… but what do they understand?!?!?).

Anyway back to my elaboration, the cat does not find a safe place to sit down and then analyze just how close the dog came to catching him. He does not think to himself “The dog must be getting faster, usually it does not even come close to catching me. I wonder if it is because its owner has started jogging with him now rather than walking and that is how the dog must be getting fitter. Hmmmm, what must I do to get my edge back on the dog again? Perhaps I should run up and down more trees build up some fitness that way, or maybe talk to another local cat and ask what tips they have for improving my fitness?”

The cat does not over analyze the chase for example: “if I had only turned left at the tree rather than going straight ahead I might have got an extra 5 feet lead because I can corner quicker than the dog!!”

No, he lets it go and moves on. The difference with humans is that we ruminate on things, analyzing and reanalyzing keeping it in our awareness by asking ourselves ‘what if and how could’, like a slow cooker that is never turned off, just stewing away forever.

Maybe, if we could be more like my clumsy friend’s philosophy to life, we would have more peace and acceptance in our lives, it’s worth considering!!