112. Apply this to your mature dating and your “happiness” quotient may soar

A good friend of mine died of prostate cancer nearly a dozen years ago. He had been a healthy, active man with a great attitude toward life, kind and loving, a wonderful father and husband – and he died. A few years later I had dinner with his wife and we were talking about how our lives are going without our spouses. (Her husband died just two weeks after my wife died, only about 50 yards down the hall on the same floor of the same hospital, so we have a lot in common in that sense.) She said, “You know, Chuck, I just don’t understand it. I have a neighbor who’s such a grouch. He won’t even let the kids come into his yard to get their ball when they happen to hit it over the fence. And yet, here he is alive and well, and Dale is dead. I don’t understand why it has to happen that way.”

When things go bad you often hear people say something like, “Why me?” “Why did my wife leave me? Why did this relationship end when I thought it was going so well? I tried so hard.”

When my wife was diagnosed with cancer that was the question we had. We ate a healthy, balanced, nutritional diet, we both ran nearly every morning, we were hikers, and backpackers, and X-country and Alpine skiers. There had been no history of cancer in her family. But there it was: cancer. Why?

By the time she died eight years later, however, I had begun to realize that the opposite question: “Why not?” was just as relevant. Since her death I’ve learned more as I’ve dug deep into spiritual teachings and questioned who and what I am. What I’ve learned – and it’s so obvious when we really think about it -- is that the universe is really a huge mystery. All we can really say about it is that it operates as it does, and everything is allowed and possible. This apparent individual “me” is also simply the Universe expressing itself as a person, just as it does a planet or a wind storm. It’s all one divine essence.

We think we know so much, but we really know so little. For instance, science has learned a lot about how the human body works. But the experts will tell you they’re nowhere near truly understanding it. There’s so much we don’t know. We know, for instance, that electiricity works and how to harness it. But no one can really explain why it’s there. Nor can we know why the world is made of energy – atoms and swirling electrons that, when you get to the smallest element of them, are nothing but space.

To put it simply, “reality is.” Period. That’s it. That’s all we can really know. Look around. When we observe reality and stop making judgments about it we find more peace. It’s simply a matter of “what is,” is. It’s raining because it’s raining. Someone gets hit by a bus and is killed – because they do. Yet our minds continue to do what minds are supposed to do – search for an answer. The problem with that is that we start believing we need an answer. We start thinking "answer" is something real and that we should find it. But it's nothing but a thought, an illusion.

Instead, we can just watch life. Why does a cut on your finger heal, without you doing a thing about it? Why do you stub your toe on the dresser when you get up in the night, when for a thousand nights before that you didn’t? Why were you born in a country that allowed you to have the education to read this and hundreds of thousands weren’t?

By continually asking “why” we’re usually just adding confusion and pain to life. And for sure we’re missing something. We’re missing what’s happening in the moment, which is the only vital, active aliveness there is. Anything before or after the moment of now is nothing but a thought. It’s a myth. Not real. When we’re asking “why?”, the implication is that it shouldn’t be this way. We’re arguing with reality as it is, and when we do that we hurt. If you question that check your own direct experience. Do you feel peaceful and at ease when you’re judging someone or something? Or is there a subtle tension and stress?

On the other hand, we can question: Is our judgment true and real? Can we really know, in the Totality of the universe what should or shouldn’t be? A few years ago a friend in California sent me an email saying a new relationship had ended. “My heart is broken in a million pieces,” she wrote. “I don’t understand why it had to end this way? Why does it happen to me? What am I doing wrong, Chuck?” she wrote. But the reality is that relationships end. It happens all the time. All we have to do is look around us. Why does it happen to me? Why not? It happens to others. Life is a mystery and why shouldn’t it happen to us as well as others.

When you start asking, “Why not?” instead of “Why me?” you’re shifting the whole dynamic. Then you’re not arguing with reality any more; you’re just seeing it as it is. There may still be pain, yes, but not nearly as much when you’re accepting the world the way the world actually is. No need to argue with it. No reason to worry and strain about what might have changed it. The truth is, nothing could have changed it. It’s the universe acting as it does. It’s the divine showing up in form so it must be exactly the way it’s supposed to be, which means it’s perfect, even though it doesn’t look like it from our limited “me-view”.

Instead of living in all that mental chatter, turmoil and confusion of the mind we can notice that thoughts are also like all the other events of life. They come and go and there’s no reason for them. Why are they there? Why not? But notice also that those thoughts appear in the Pure Awareness that you are, just as a movie appears on a screen. We don’t notice the screen as we don’t notice the Awareness. But if we relax into the Awareness and just let thoughts come and go, without getting hooked into them, there’s just simple Being. In Being you see life with your five senses wide open, enjoying the subtlety and mystery of it all just as it is. Apply this approach to your mature dating and you may notice more ease and happiness. I did.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer