148. Seeing life “as it is” makes dating happier and easier

The other day I was in a small retail store, talking to the cashier as she checked me out. She was describing her family’s plans for the Fourth of July. Another cashier overheard the conversation and immediately chimed in disapprovingly with, “You couldn’t catch me on the roads during the Fourth!” It wasn’t even her conversation yet she felt a need to weigh in from her point of view.

Often I hear people saying, “I would never do – such and such,” that they’re criticizing someone else for doing. Somehow we think we’re the reference center for life as it should be, according to us. In dating this can cause you a lot of suffering because you’re automatically judging anyone who doesn’t live life the way you live it. You make yourself unhappy with your judgments because others don’t measure up, and you know they should measure up.

It goes like this: “George said he’d call and he didn’t. I would never make a commitment like that and not follow through.” But George isn’t you. You may even think that everyone who’s decent or kind or loving, or whatever label you put on it, would say or behave like you do.

That’s a habitual way of thinking that most in our society have picked up as we've gone through life. It’s what we do best – judge others. Have you ever noticed, however, that your judging always hurts you? It never feels warm, open and free when you judge. Have you ever seen anyone smiling openly while they’re judging? More likely you see them scowling, tight-lipped and grim-faced. Isn’t that a clue to what judging feels like inside?

I don’t know about you but I was immediately repelled by the woman who jumped into our July 4th conversation with judgment and a scowling presence. I always tend to move away from people like that. I don’t need to judge her; she’s fine the way she is but I prefer not to be around her.

If you happen to catch yourself thinking or saying, “I would never do what so-and-so does,” you might want to notice that you’re using yourself as the reference point for how life should be. We each have our way of living and others have their way. Life just is that way; we’re not all the same, nor should we be expected to behave the same. If you judge by comparing others to yourself you may want to notice whether it feels peaceful or not. You might be more peaceful, and also more pleasant to be around as you date, by just asking yourself, “Is it true I know how that person should be? Just because I’d do it differently does that mean I’m right?” If you let go of “I’m right” and “my way” thinking and just see life as it is you might find yourself having a lot more fun too. When judgment is gone what’s left is simply observing life as it is. And seeing life as it is never makes us suffer.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

147. If you’re sensitive and easily hurt you’ll suffer in your relationships

If you’re a sensitive person, easily hurt, you’ll notice that in all your relationships – but especially in dating – you’ll suffer often. Sometimes it may be major suffering and in other cases it may be minor. But you’ll suffer, nonetheless.

When people are vulnerable to the slightest comment or incident that they think puts them down it’s not their fault. Somewhere in life they’ve picked up the idea that they’re somehow just not good enough. They live much of their lives, often without even realizing it, checking and comparing to see if they measure up. Their insecurity causes them to easily interpret the comments or behavior of others as directed to them and meant to hurt them. These are the people that take onto themselves statements that weren’t even referring to them.

For example, Randy, a friend of mine was telling another friend that he’d read something in a book about taste tests done on the quality of drinking water. In the blind test people rated New York City water from a fountain better in taste than most of the bottled water they taste-tested. Then lab tests were also done on the cleanliness of the water and much of the bottled water didn’t match up to the city water either. Randy was about to tell his friend he was going to quit filtering his water when she began to argue with the results of the taste test and defend her own use of bottled water. She had assumed Randy was criticizing her for her use of bottled water when he had no thought of what she was doing at all. He was simply referring to his own water filtering.

In another incident my friend Sally had made arrangements to see a movie with Del. Del checked movie times and they selected one that he said would start at 7 p.m. When they got to the theater the movie had started 30 minutes earlier. It turns out Del had read the wrong line in the paper. Sally wasn’t upset in the slightest, and saw clearly that they just weren’t meant to see the movie at that time. She suggested they have dinner instead. Del then offered to buy dinner at an expensive restaurant and Sally jokingly said, “You don’t have to buy my dinner just because you got the movie time wrong.”

Instantly Del was hurt, later telling Sally that she was poking fun at him just because he had made a mistake. He was making her responsible for his suffering. It’s impossible that she could have caused his hurt because none of us even has that power. We either choose to be hurt or not.

Sally explained that her comment was nothing more than a spontaneous joke, which she thought Del could see if he just noticed her reaction when they found out the time was wrong. She was totally at peace with the fact that it happened, she said, knowing that’s just a happening. Even the words “wrong” or “mistake” are not accurate because there is no such thing except in our heads. We label something as a mistake when actually all it’s ever been is a happening. Nothing more.

So what do you do if you’re a person who gets easily hurt emotionally? Are you stuck with that condition forever? No. The good news is that all we have to do is look to see whether our thoughts about ourselves are really true. It doesn’t even matter where we picked up such thoughts. It could have been from family, kids or teachers at school, or many other ways. We don’t have to go back and figure out how we got those thought habits.

All we need to do is recognize that our self-image is nothing more than a bundle of thoughts we call me. When we look at ourselves right now is it true we’re really deficient in some way? I used to be a person with poor self-esteem which I carried with me for years. Finally I realized that that apparently rock-solid statue of thoughts I created that looked so real was a total illusion. My seemingly-so-real image of me was just that, an image – an image that caused me a lot of suffering. And it was based on false concepts I thought were true at the time they were formed.

They were concepts, or thoughts, that I took on at various times in life. Seeing that there’s really no me inside who’s running this show called Chuck was the end to all that since there’s not even a person to build an image around. Seeing clearly can be the end of the suffering for you too if you’re sincere about looking inside and seeing false ideas as false. What’s left after that is just life happening. Without judgments that’s really fine. There’s nothing to defend or argue about. Life just is!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer