The Element of Being Less Self Centered and Its Hope for Seeing Things in the Correct Light

Several years ago, I was invited to one of Tanita’s friend’s houses for a middle school graduation party.  

The hosts were a mixed family, in which a white American lady had married into a traditional Indian family.

At the party, there were lots of traditional Indian women, busy at work in an open kitchen.

Some were kneading dough for chappathis, others were rolling them out, and a third set were frying these chappathis on the stove.  The man of the house saw me standing around and said, “What are you doing, eh? Help with the chappathis, eh.”  I felt humiliated to be ordered by him to help, and I have never made chappathis, so I also felt like a fool, but I tried to help out for about 10 minutes or so.

I then joined a group of 4 or 5 people who were seated around a table in the backyard. They were white, and were obviously part of the extended family of the hostess. 

The people at the table knew each other and talked among themselves.  They never addressed me, or tried to include me in the conversation. I felt awkward and uncomfortable. As soon as it was convenient to and I could excuse myself from the party, I said thank you to the hostess and went home.

The next day, my friend Nadya called me.  During the conversation, I remembered my experience at the party and decided to tell her about it.

I said, “My goodness, Nadya- I went to this party yesterday, and it was awful. First the man of the house tried to rope me in to make an Indian bread called chappathis with his relatives who spoke only Hindi. In fact, he criticized me when he saw me standing around, and told me I should help out, so I tried to help out, though I do not know how to make this bread and I could not communicate with any of the other ladies.”

I continued, “Then I sat at a table with these people and they never talked to me at all.”

I continued, “I think it was because I was Indian. They thought I had nothing in common with them and there was nothing they could talk to me about. So they ignored me.”

I continued, “All those other ladies were traditional Indian ladies, you know, housewives who have never worked outside the house.  Most of them don’t know English. So I think the people I was seated with thought I did not know English.”

Before I could go any further, Nadya stopped me.

She said, “Maybe, the people you were seated with were not thinking about you at all.  They were just involved with their own conversation. I know you felt uncomfortable, but my guess is they were not thinking about you at all.”

Hmm…. “Maybe they were not thinking about me at all”.  I had not considered this possibility.

Indeed, when I thought about it, they hardly looked my way.

I had felt out of place at the party, and based on the fact of my discomfort, I had tried to find answers in the fact I was Indian, and there were these other Indian ladies there who didn’t know English.

But, as Nadya said, most likely the people at my table “were not thinking about me at all.”

I have replayed Nadya’s words many times since that party.

Every time, a social situation leaves me feeling unwanted, or dejected, or left out, I remind myself not to take it personally.  I say, “Minoo, remember, they are as preoccupied and self-centered as you are, and are not thinking about you at all. Whatever is happening is not deliberate and it is not intentional.”

It’s when we think people are thinking about us, that we can misinterpret everything they say or do, or everything they don’t say or don’t do, and decide it is targeted at us.

Take this scenario.

Someone publishes a photo of themselves on Facebook.

Several people comment on the photo; we are one of those who comment on the photo.

A little while later, we notice that the person who published the photo has written a few words to each one, acknowledging their comments.

We look for the acknowledgement of our own comment, but for whatever reason (probably an accidental oversight), it’s not there.

The person who published the photo might have made a genuine slip and forgotten to reply to our comment, but does that thought enter our head?

No…..

Because we are the “only one” whose comment was not acknowledged, we take it personally and our mind immediately begins concocting stories.

“She must be angry with me”, we think.

“Or maybe she doesn’t like me.” “I don’t understand what she would have against me, though.”

We start trying to remember every interaction we have had with this person, recently or in the past, to figure out where things might have gone wrong.

We are filled with doubt and start speculating. 
  
“Could she have got upset with me because I said, “nice car?” Did she think I was being sarcastic?”

“Did someone say something to her about me and turn her against me?”

Soon we have created a whole lot of scenarios worthy of a Desperate Housewives plot.

We have turned a simple oversight into a full-scale drama.

A drama in which there are heroes and villains, us being the hero of course.

The villain’s mistake will not be easily forgotten.

We might harbor a grudge for that unacknowledged comment for years and years. 

How ridiculous is this!

We should stop ourselves and do a reality check.

We should ask ourselves – what could this person gain from making us feel bad?

Isn’t she busy enough with her own concerns and her own life, and doesn’t she have better things to do than to make us feel bad?

It was a plain oversight. Clear and simple. Nothing nefarious was involved.

Whenever we are tempted to think an issue has something to do with us (which is called projection), we should remember my friend Nadya’s admonition “They are not thinking about you at all.”

“It's all in the mind.” said George Harrison.

It’s true.

Depending on how self-centered we are, or how narrow our view of the world is, and how suspicious we are of people, we can easily get the wrong idea about things.

We can create false pictures of the world.

In our false pictures of the world, everything that people say or do comes under suspicion.

If our dog gets sick, our minds immediately jump to the fact that a stranger gave our dog a dog treat in the dog park when we were out walking the dog the other day. Was it stale, was it laced with something?

If our door key sticks in the lock when we get home from work, our mind leaps to the idea that someone may have been at our house and tried to jimmy the lock. A fleeting nasty thought about one of our neighbors crosses our mind.

Some people are superstitious and will even ascribe the misfortunes that happen to them to the presence of someone in their lives.

Our self-centeredness creates an unnecessary wall between ourselves and other people.

It makes us untrusting of other people.

We develop theories at the drop of a hat.

“Why did she say that?”  “Why did she do that?”

We get so caught up in our own ideas, we think they are the golden truth.

For example, there was this girl in my apartment, who though I knew her family and had even been over to her house, typically did not say hi to me, or smile, when I crossed her path.

In the beginning, I used to be caught up with my own ideas as to why this was the case.

My mind would be going all over the place, “Something about me obviously puts her off. She appears to be so pissed when she sees me.”

This was uncharitable of me – because she has a disability and walks with a crutch. In fact, it took her a long time just to get from her apartment to the car to go to college.

But every time I ran into her and she did not smile or acknowledge me, the same thoughts would run in my head all over again.

Until one day, it dawned on me her behavior might have nothing to do with me.

Maybe, she was in pain and never said hi to anybody.” What Nadya said to me came back to me “Maybe she is not thinking about me at all.”

It was a relief to experience this change in thinking.

“Humans see what they want to see.” said Rick Riordan.

As the example I just gave you illustrates, depending on our frame of mind, we can see a person in pain, or we can see a slight.

If we interpret everything that happens as something that has a bearing on our image and our well-being, we will be easily upset.

Someone may come and talk to a coworker at the cube next to us, but not stop and say hi to us.

It immediately becomes cause to take offense and we will start projecting, “I wonder why. Is it because…..” We start trying to fill in the blanks and we concoct some stories.

It is very easy to find evidence for our concocted stories.

For instance, a manager may praise someone’s work in front of us. By habit, we may instantly start thinking back on all the different interactions between this person and us, the manager and this person, or the manager and us, and then start concocting our stories.

We will concoct all sorts of scenarios to support the idea that the manager is playing favorites, or the person who was praised is doing something underhand.

Whereas all it is, in fact, is that someone’s work was praised, and that someone was not us and we are upset.  

This is how being self centered can lead us down a rabbit hole and turn us against innocent people and innocent situations.

We must be careful not to let our world-view and the dominant concerns in our life cloud our judgment about reality.

Personal interpretations, if they give rise to joy and wonder, serve us well.

Since learning to meditate in late 2010, I have started believing in telepathy. I have had several experiences which I believe to have been telepathic experiences. It fills me with joy and wonder to think I am in tune with other human beings and I can have telepathic experiences with them.

This is an example of a personal interpretation which has a positive effect and increases our joy.

However, if our personal interpretations increase our fears and anxieties, and cause us to distrust other people’s intentions, they definitely do not serve us well.

In fact, they do us a disservice.

The sooner we drop our self-centered reactions to things, the better our lives will be.

We will learn to relax and not look for slights, we will have trusting relationships with people and less misunderstandings.

We will see that most things are not deliberate or intentional.

When we stop interpreting other people’s behavior in terms of how it impacts us, we will be more fun to be around, and no one will need to walk on eggshells when they are with us.

We will go from taking offense and being defensive, to being magnanimous and trusting and open, and seeing the big picture in life.  And what could be better than that?

I will end with these lines from Bertrand Russell:

“These illustrations suggest four general maxims…
The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself.
The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits.
The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself.
And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.”

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M...a Pearl-Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay and Rosie for their comments on Facebook, and thanks to everyone else for their votes.