The Devil Makes Work For The Complacent

The Royal Wedding weekend has come and gone proceeding the Bank Holiday weekend and my two weeks off work. And what have I to show for it? Not a lot unfortunately. I have pages of notes yet to be articulately typed up and have forsaken a university course application for a fortnight now. There is a list of half-finished home maintenance jobs I have still to go through and, to be perfectly honest, I cannot recall having shaved once throughout the entire fortnight.

Ninety-nine percent of the time I put this down to smoking skunk. In order to procrastinate, especially whilst taking a break from something needing pressing attention, I find myself lighting up a “well deserved” joint and settling down to delight in some unconstructive reading; blogs scrupulously scrutinising every conceivable incense available in the West, research on the genetics of Gujaratis residing in Texas, tracing back their ethnic makeup to Western Asia and the Caucasus and the history of Persian relations with the Punjab, for example. At times I tune in to Soma FM, for their “playful exotica and vintage music of tomorrow”, or to Music India Online, to relish in Classical North Indian raga’s heard at the correct samay for maximum atmospheric effect. And then there is always Facebook… All too soon the pre-dawn sky turns from cobalt to a clear, baby blue; my screen still blank, my ashtray runneth over…

I have always beaten myself up over this; the adolescent years spent locked away in my bedroom actually working for nights on end on some creative project or another, all with the help of nothing more than a trusty score, are long, long gone. I am no longer nearing my twenties, nor does the stuff evoke any other inspiration than a sole aspiration to relax. Yet I continue to use cannabis as an excuse for creativity, an excuse to unwind, an excuse to socialise. Or is it that these activities are used as an excuse to smoke? Year after year I have watched people jog past me on the road to success, each year sprouting younger participants, and I have remained content to stroll at my leisure, enjoying and criticising the surrounding scenery, iPod on shuffle, joint perpetually between my fingers. I have rebuffed handfuls of opportunities through laziness, lack of enthusiasm and a lack of commitment; gigs secured at prestigious venues where we failed to make an appearance, foreign language tutors abandoned, work openings from casting agents disregarded. There is no one to blame for the impending loss of my twenties but myself. But is weed the devil in this case?

I have been discovering over the past few years that many of my friends, acquaintances and even family members have fallen victim to this critical and contagious disease known as Complacence. My closest friend, an exotically beautiful chanteuse – a criminology and sociology graduate – with an infectious and electric persona, has toiled for London’s Emergency Services for the past half-decade; another rather handsome young acquaintance who has only recently moved to the capital with the dream of being discovered as a fashion model, seems to work all the hours that God sends at a well known West End department store to maintain his rent and bills, allowing him no time to pursue his ambition; my sister, a celebrated thespian back in her university days, who had attempted her first novel aged twelve, freelances as a Presentation Scheduler. Others, closer to thirty than they are to twenty, are yet to ascertain their calling and have applied for jobs in sales or within local councils in the meantime. None of these people smoke.

So what could their excuses be for their complacence? Some have family commitments and responsibilities, others choose to save as they live at home whilst simultaneously indulging in retail therapy with the surplus of their income, others still are earning only enough to manage the maintenance of a lifestyle with perhaps a chance to enjoy themselves once in a while if the budget allows it. A job may ultimately be just that, a means to an end, but for how long can it be so? Especially when so many of us in our mid to late twenties have had the education, possess the abilities and raw talent and are also fortunate enough to have the freedom and opportunities to pursue any career we choose. Especially when time is very quickly running out.

One theory is that we are a spoilt bunch! Many of my friends choose to remain at home; I know people who are earning over forty thousand and are still happy to tuck themselves in snugly under the wings of mum and dad. Though I may be supporting myself, so to speak, I do not pay any rent. Also, were anything to go awry, forcing me out of my home, I know that my parents are but a twenty-five-minute drive away in North-West London. I do not, nor would I ever, expect anything from them but I am still secure in the knowledge that my parents’ support is unconditional. I may not even be speaking for a whole generation, rather for a select minority, but never actually having been thrown in the deep end of anything, knowing that I am never alone with an obligation to fend for myself, may have made me soft. My parents were never well off; my dad was the main breadwinner with my mum helping out – either by finding work or by setting up some sort of business or another – over the numerous periods that my dad’s job was under threat. Despite both parents having to really work hard in order to sustain three children and a household, we were never left wanting for anything. It was only recently that our mum divulged to us her secrets and the struggles they had faced over the decades, or we would have been none the wiser. We had still enjoyed a very happy and truly fulfilling upbringing.

Though my mum, being the last child of five, may have been raised in modest comfort – her father worked abroad, in Karachi, and would send money over whilst her mother taught classical languages at the local primary school – my dad’s family were part of the Asians expelled from Uganda by the mentally deranged Idi Amin in 1972. They were an affluent middle-class family of bespoke tailors and musicians who were forced to abandon all their belongings, both sentimental as well as three generations worth of accumulated revenue, and flee the only life they knew to seek refuge in England. The Ugandan government permitted them to take only fifty pounds out of the country and this is all they had to their name when they first stepped into the UK. My dad’s family were first-hand witnesses to the atrocities committed against their people over the twenty-mile drive from their home in Kampala to Entebbe airport; Indians being looted of their heirlooms, the ancestral gold and jewels they had attempted to smuggle out of the country on their person and on their children, men being beaten and hanged on roadside trees, women being dragged off by the Ugandan soldiers to be made an example of before being murdered. And upon arrival at the countries of their destinations – a number of families were severed as some members were sent to the United Kingdom and others to India, Canada and the Untied States depending on their passports – the refugees landing in London were greeted with anti-immigration protest marches led by British meat porters clearly fuelled by Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech from a few years earlier, still fresh, warm and rapidly putrefying in their savage minds. My father, being the eldest of the boys, had to find work as soon as he could; he has been working for the same company since he was fifteen. My youngest aunt and two uncles went to school having fruit pelted at them and chewing gum thrown in their hair, facing chants of ‘Piss Off You Pakis’ during their journeys. One of my dad’s brothers was so badly bullied and beaten up by racists that he ultimately died in his teens of a brain haemorrhage. Even after my parents met and married ten years later and I was born on a council estate in East London’s Stepney Green in the mid-eighties, the sheer amount of racial discrimination and abuse the family would regularly have to endure forced them to move to a more racially diverse area of London. Over those past ten years, my dad had managed to save enough money to buy a spacious four-bedroom, detached house in suburban Harrow for his parents and younger siblings, and a much smaller semi-detached for his wife and kids only a mile away in hospitable Kingsbury; this is where my sisters were born and where the three of us were raised. 

So what do we know of true endurance and of having to work hard? We now complain of our interminably drawn out commutes to work, of injustices and of benefit fraudsters, the “council estate scum”. We complain that there are not enough career prospects out there yet we pull sick days when we have guzzled one too many bottles of wine the night before or when we simply cannot find the will to go into work. We complain of our working hours, of how we have such little time to ourselves to actually utilise our free time proactively in order to accomplish the goals of our dreams. Our mothers were managing employment, children and a household whilst our fathers were working unpaid overtime just for job security. It is definitely not in our genes, so why are we still so damn lazy? How is it that hard work has actually become totally anathema to us? It has to be because we honestly have no idea what it is to have to make ends meet; we have no real responsibilities or dependants. And we are complacent in this bestowal. We relish in it.

Again, it’s not all of us who suffer from this disease. Ultimately, as with anything, there is always a balance and just as we are complacent, there are the go-getters of the world, the high-flyers and the doers. They may not have the knowledge, the charm nor the looks but they have the vigour and the patience to persevere. Then you have us, the complacent layabouts, waiting for our successful futures to be handed to us on a warmed plate in one easily digestible and deceivingly delicious portion. We may have it all, the knowledge, the charisma and the strikingly good looks, but none of the drive and fortitude to work hard for an end result.

Now I am the first to advocate the easy life, a life full of enjoyment and devoid of stress, but reality constantly reminds me of the necessity to work to see any of my dreams come to fruition. Besides, remaining idle gives us more time to think wasteful thoughts than is necessary for any human being. Rather than strategise a future for ourselves, we choose to obsess over such insignificant issues as relationships, appearance and other people’s hidden agendas, for example. We seem to lose our grasp on reality through this kind of thinking and begin to take all our parents’ years of hard work, efforts and generous provides for granted; we take the good fortune of our lives for granted. All too soon, the years will have passed us before our very eyes and all we will have to show for it are a developed form of neurosis and deep regret. This wasteful thinking is the work the devil makes for us, both aiding and challenging our complacence to cause utter confusion and lead us to the dangers of self-doubt. Albert Einstein once defined the height of insanity as “continuing to do the same thing over and over, and then expecting different results”. This appears to be the precise nature of the complacent lot; we seem to come up with the loftiest justifications for our intransigence.

“It is only laziness that can make a slave of a free man”

This is a quote I once read in the Shahnameh, the Persian book of Kings, and I have it written in magnetic ‘ransom note’ letters stuck onto my fridge. It is what I strive to live by; I read it every morning to remind me to exert my efforts and to not throw my life away for the temporary pleasures of indolence. Yet, though I see this quote every single day, it seems to have failed to make much of a lasting impact on me; this universal truth is thoughtlessly dismissed as just words on a fridge, part of the furniture, and this is where the roots of our problems lie. The longer we choose to ignore the unmistakable writings on the wall, regardless of whether we smoke the highest grade, regardless of a conditioned complacency or laziness, the more we will suffer ourselves, growing bitter as we grow older, over how we have wasted our lives.

It is up to us to shape our destinies and subsequently the future and fate of our societies. Thoughts and talk are ultimately useless without being followed by immediate positive action.

News clippings of Ugandan Asian refugees landing in the UK, August 1972

My dad with his eldest sister at the flat in Stepney around the late 1970s

Is Attachment The Fountainhead Of All Sorrow?

Is attachment the fountainhead of all sorrow?

I have been reminded today that every time I experience distress, it’s root lay festering in the polluted mud of attachment; destructive spores of negative thought intermittently attack at its fragility.

Last night, in a state of acute insomnia through anxiety, I turned to Dadi Janki’s Inside Out. No, I have not misspelled the name of one strapping, Puerto Rican raggaeton artist, nor was I up all night reading his autobiography. Dadi Janki (meaning Grandmother Janki in Hindi) is one of the founding members of the Brahma Kumari’s World Spiritual University, “an international organisation working at all levels of society for positive change”. The organisation was established in the late 1930’s in Sindh, presently a province of Pakistan, as a mouthpiece for spiritual teaching. It enlightens its students with a divine understanding of the self largely through meditation and positive thinking.

Being the last day before the Easter Bank holidays, and the subsequent Bank holiday thanks to the Royal Wedding (prompting the company I work for to mercifully close for a full eleven days), last night I anticipated being in receipt of my first full month’s pay after my abrupt, unfair dismissal back in January. Naturally, this was a triumphant moment for me; I would finally be back in the position to pay off my outstanding bills, ready to pay the first instalments of my Council Tax and utility bills and would be back on the track to financial stability. I must have been overly enthusiastic. After 1am in the morning, I logged onto my Internet Banking only to discover that my Building Society had heedlessly withdrawn my overdraft facilities. I was still slightly overdrawn after my salary had been paid into the account but was now without an overdraft so, therefore, without access to a penny of my earnings. I went into a state of hysteria: How was I going to contribute towards my bills? How was I going to get through the month?? How on Earth was I going to be able to acquire more funds??? Telephone banking operated on a strict 9am-5pm schedule and there was nothing I could do for the next eight hours. Nothing whatsoever!

I grudgingly got into bed whereupon increased levels of panic set in amidst the encompassing silence and the elaborate worrying. I attempted to read Nietzsche for inspiration, I considered turning on the television to a food channel or a nature documentary for its alleviating drone to overwhelm my angst. I tried to meditate but gave up almost instantly, declaring to myself that to clear my mind was, at that point, akin to a crack at clearing away all the consequences of man-made contamination imposed upon the Earth.

By my bedside, I caught a glimpse of a vivid, pink lotus flower set against a deep jade background; Inside Out. I opened it at a random page near the beginning and began to read, “Free yourself from the crisis that you create through your own negativity. There are so many external crises you can’t even count them. There is nothing you can do about that. But the crisis you create in your own mind, according to the quality of your thoughts – at least put a stop to that.” I read another quote, “To experience sorrow is an act of senselessness. Remember this very well. When you feel sorrow about something, understand that you are lacking some understanding. For whom should I feel sorrow? Does it help either me or others?”

My thinking quickly began to cease. There really was nothing I could do about my situation – not at that moment anyway. It was useless for me to agonize over my options and lose sleep over it; I had to get up for work in almost four hours. Ultimately, all I would suffer would be the irksome bother of inconvenience, the delay; there were always, always other options available. Reading these quotes over and over again, I managed to clear my head. Of course, flashes of fret did indeed strike momentarily through my mind but I was now in firm control of my thoughts and able to put a stop to them.

“…to become upset… about something, even to have an off-mood, is like putting a drop of poison into a pot of nectar. It spoils everything. It doesn’t just take away peace, it brings unhappiness.”

This was the last quote I repeated to myself before drifting off and this very concept is what set my day the following morning. I was full of positive energy and rearing to go, encouraged further by the fact that it was my last day at work before my extended Easter break. The sun was beaming, the air was heavily scented with the aroma of spring blossom and the weather had chosen to remain as delightfully warm as it had been all week, quite atypical for April. At work, I happened to find myself being connected with the most kindest and genuinely obliging advisor when I called the Building Society first thing at 9am. She immediately reinstated my overdraft limit with no qualms and I was back in working order; the three hours I had spent driving myself crazy the night before were, after all, an utter waste of time and, above all, a complete depletion of energy.

All was calm.

A couple of hours later, I received a text. G, my other half, was already set to celebration mode and was informing me of probable plans to go out late that night with a regular group of close friends. Dark clouds began to form.

G undergoes a monthly depilatory process preceding a haircut. Over the past year or so I have made a mental note of this practice, even sat there watching the process (having always been left titillated by the delectable full view of the outcome), which is generally followed by a meticulous beauty regime, observing that G has almost always left for a night out once impeccably groomed. Even the construction of the perfect outfit for the night seems to take an age to achieve if it has not already been conscientiously contrived well in advance.

What I have always failed to come to grips with is why someone in a five-year relationship would feel a need to tend to their body hair in preparation of a night that should comprise exclusively of no more than alcohol, bitching and dancing. Why get a haircut and make such an effort to look your best for a night out? Why not exert yourself for me once in a while? Over the years, simple uncertainties have deteriorated to form deep suspicions. Alone in my flat with nothing but idle time I create clear images of my better half bending over, Dutty Wine-ing in the middle of the dance floor; a long queue of men stand in line to cop a feel, to pinch the alluring tight backside or to manage an underhanded caress of that impeccably maintained crotch through the provocative, silky underwear of my companion, my confidant, my soul mate, MY CROTCH!

And that is where the trouble begins, with this damned insistence of ‘my’ and ‘mine’; attachment through possession. This particular form of attachment seems to engulf you silently overnight. It judiciously selects individuals you have chosen to keep close to your heart with the intention to drive them further away. As it does this, attachment itself, after conquering your heart, moves on to occupy and secure your mind; it rules your thoughts, dictates your actions and mars intelligence and good sense.

What is worse is that, in the present age of social networking, we have the means and opportunities to indulge negative forms of attachment; mobile phones, smartphones, computers and laptops. Through these mediums, we feed the insanity of our attachments to the point where we no longer have control of our bodies. Against our better judgement, we find ourselves reading through text messages, signing in to our partner’s email accounts and logging on to personal websites, all the while allowing ourselves to get pulled down further into a dangerous abyss of jealousy, anger, hatred and irrationality. We delude ourselves into believing that our partners should pledge sole allegiance to us; they should keep no secrets from us; they should love us and pleasure us unconditionally and they should relish in this. After all we do for them!

I responded to G’s text, making clear my sentiments. Anger, fuelled by indignation, had seized my entire being. How many meet-ups and nights out had I unobtrusively cancelled because G did not approve of the company? Or because I knew G had had a strenuous working day and because I wanted to make sure a hearty, healthy, favourite dinner was prepared and ready in time? How many friends and acquaintances have I had to cut myself off from just because they indulged in social drug-use or had expressed a physical interest in me? How much have I had to alter my entire life and personality in order to keep G happy and feeling secure?

“Internally, people do create many difficult situations for themselves. Arrogance, for, example, makes you feel disrespect and causes you sorrow. Arrogance brings a desire for regard and respect and when you don’t receive these you feel it to be an insult. ‘Look, I do so much for them, but this is how they repay me.’ If I give from the heart and don’t have arrogance, I wont have such feelings.”

Despite G’s hopeless frustration and subsequent insistence on staying home for a night in together, despite my prior, divine knowledge and my better judgement, in spite of myself, I remained vexed. At the same time, the sun remained warm and intensely radiant. No dark clouds accumulated themselves over its splendour, it did not rain, nor did the cool, gentle breeze attempt to pick up its pace with a biting malice. In observation of all this, over a stroll during my lunch break, I began to think clearly again, to see the bigger picture. Young children on their end of term holidays were laughing with their parents, trying to balance on their bicycles with one hand holding a generously served, rapidly melting ice cream cone. Teenage girls and unemployed youths walked to the park next door to my block of flats gossiping and giggling in groups and donning mini skirts, bare chests and suggestive smiles. Even the lonely spinsters and idle housewives were out jovially walking their dogs or jogging with determination and a smile.

Why was I causing myself so much grief when there was so much to be grateful for? What was I achieving by holding a grudge so unnecessarily and for nothing?

“People feel sorrow when they are holding on to situations. They forget that these situations are external to them. All it takes is to let go. Once they achieve this, they become happy and peaceful again and can begin to smile. How often have we looked back on some previous trouble and wondered what all the fuss was about?”

After all, G and I have built a strong relationship over five years and we are still together. If anything were to have gone awry, surely it would have been communicated by now. I must admit, G has put up with a lot from me; even last year, when I had suddenly become conscious of a love from my past, began discussing marriage, G remained by my side full of support, content with whatever guaranteed my own happiness so long as we remained in each other’s lives. Would this not have been the perfect opportunity for G to break free, or to go forth and indulge in sexual discovery through experiences with many other men? Why do logical arguments like this not arise in the mind when we are self harming with needless insecurities and jealousy? Why do we constantly choose to immerse ourselves in our negative emotions when it is much easier, and would actually relieve us, to simply let go?

We are so full of ego that to even consider this alternative of letting go is to compromise our strength; we would appear submissive, ineffectual and ultimately weak. We fail to realise our potential to become greater, happier and ultimately in control. To let go does not necessarily mean to give in. Still we wallow in doubts and suspicion, draining our energy and mental powers.

Suspicion is, after all, an exhausting obsession. This senseless, fabricated need to own someone is what drives our desire to control them, to coerce them to submit. And we want to own them because we are attached to them; we want them to be compliantly ours for as long as we need them.

So is attachment truly the fountainhead of all sorrow? I personally believe so. For those whose egos cause them sorrow, they are still attached to their own self image, are they not? For those who have experienced intense anger towards their loved ones, it stems from some form of frustration through attachment. We become frustrated and agitated when something is not done right, or executed in a particular way, or if we are not being listened to, for example. If we had not been overly attached to our loved ones, if we were not so reliant, we could happily manage by ourselves. We could act with our loved ones without any expectations. It is expectation, after all, that leads to disappointment.

It is attachment that makes us want to shake our siblings when they repeatedly disregard your good advice. Can we not allow people to learn from their own mistakes? It is attachment that makes us feel let down by our closest friends. Can we not learn to be self sufficient, without the assistance or approval of those we have chosen to revere? It is attachment that instils us with fear through jealousy and distrust. Who are we to take control of anyone’s life when we have yet to learn how to successfully manage our own?

I am not sure if it is possible to defeat attachment. We are human after all; since birth we have only been rewarded when expressing attachment, from that first bawl for our mothers. We are attached to our bedrooms, our possessions, even to futile talismans; it is almost like a second nature!

“You need to attend to the quality of the thoughts that you allow to come to your mind. This is only sensible. It is, after all, your mind. Thoughts should be pure, elevated and determined. Then just see the results. Without rituals, postures, chanting, etc, you will experience peace of mind.”

A negative emotion is amongst the most difficult to counter. You can try your best to think positive until the cows come home, but that is only possible once you have cleared the negative from your mind. It is pointless to be determined about a situation yet to still harbour doubts – even the smallest, most insignificant of misgivings will swamp your efforts and take you back to square one.

So train yourself to haul your mind out from the depths of this most repugnantly malodorous pool of negative effluence. Whether your demise be attachment, ego, greed or lust, change your thought process in order for you to avoid the fatuous fallout of sorrow and negativity. What we fail to realise is that thoughts and emotions are contagious; they can be picked up subtly by those who we hold dearest to us, those who know us. These people suffer equally when we do, though they may not explicate it. If we cannot change ourselves for our own benefit, let us at least strive for a positive change to help keep our loved ones, those who will always, unconditionally hold our best interests as their reason for being.

Why choose the difficult task of willing to see rain clouds when your sky is indefinitely forecast to be clear with warm sun?