In my search for how I might deal with personally challenging situations, I have come across various philosophies and arts of living. Ideas of Stoicism and the ancient Asian world-views have been particularly appealing to me.
In these, happiness and unhappiness are seen primarily as human value judgements and constructs of our minds. It is the human being who makes this world fair and just and judges it.
The external world around us is neutral. A flower, for example, does not distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. It emanates its fragrance for all and merely follows the laws of cause and effect.
The forces of the cosmos are neither just nor unjust. They are there, nothing more. At least as I understand it, it is the human mind that ascribes value to things. The world then becomes what we think it is and the events become what we interpret and evaluate them to be. This is one way available to us in which we can interact and resonate with the world around us. But it is also an opportunity to free ourselves to some extent from the compulsive search for happiness and fear of unhappiness.
For we humans often associate happiness with positive thoughts and actions. According to ancient Asian teachings, every positive also contains something negative and vice versa. So where there is shadow, there is also light. Saying that you are happy means that you have been unhappy in the past. If you like one flower, you like another one less. This duality is important to us. You need to know the negative in order to appreciate the positive. I am also familiar with this approach from sport, where it is essential for me to accept losing from time to time in order to properly appreciate and value a win. Often we find that it is a setback that motivates us to keep striving for something and ultimately to grow. Every complaint about something carries with it the hope of improvement. But such knowledge alone does not make one happy. The reason is that true happiness seems to me to lie concealed in the absence of such judgements. So I try to accept things and people as they are without judging and without evaluating them too much. I admit it’s not easy and I am still a long way from being able to do this. And I don’t think this should stop us from appreciating or approving something, or having preferences, or being optimistic, quite the opposite. Perhaps it means simply being content with what you have more often, and taking the moment as it is. This way we also abide more in the present, neither dwelling on the past nor longing for the future. This is the quintessence of inner peace and balance, and makes us more serene. Take children as an example. They are able to fully surrender to the moment instead of ‘overthinking’ everything and often seem happy and carefree. According to Buddhists, happiness can be found within us if we keep things simple and, for example, meditate.
Why do we often find it so difficult to just sit quietly? It is because we constantly distract ourselves with wishes. We believe that happiness is somewhere ‘out there’ and we have to look for it in the outside world. It will come when we possess some specific thing, do something specific, experience something specific or achieve something specific. And as quickly and successfully as possible.
I find the metaphor of the ‘monkey mind’, which comes from Buddhism, very fitting. Thoughts are compared to branches and the mind to a monkey that hops restlessly from one branch to another. Some thoughts are judgements, or memories, others are ideas about the future. We worry, plan the coming weekend and go through the shopping list, bother about mistakes we’ve made, mourn a missed opportunity and evaluate what’s going on. In this way the monkey mind swings through several thousand branches every day.
This mental busyness can be useful. It allows us to forge long-term plans, drives us in our actions and enables us to solve problems. Nevertheless, we would do well to tame the monkey and calm down the inner jumping-jack that constantly distracts us from the present.
Nobody is saying it’s easy. In my case in particular as an athlete, I always want to achieve something, I am very goal-oriented and looking to the future. My thoughts often revolve around optimising my performance and achieving goals. New stimuli, but also always striking a balance, this is an important, continuous process of growth. For this, meditation can help me to see in a non-judgemental and unbiased way what my mind is up to, to let go of useless thoughts and to slow down the monkey mind. I have a clear view of what is essential and really important, and I realise what personal happiness actually means.
It is precisely the tendency to focus on the future with an eye to my goals that makes me realise how much happiness and unhappiness are linked to our perspective, how we see things, even in the way we use our language. Thus we seem to seek happiness in the future that lies before us, for example by ‘reaching’ goals, ‘striving’ for contentment or ‘grasping’ happiness. Meanwhile, misfortune ‘catches up’ with us, we are ‘overtaken’ by fate, and so on. This allows us to hope for a better future and encourages us to turn away and leave the supposedly bad things behind us. But it also prevents us from living contentedly in the here and now, and taking things as they are. It tempts us to chase after happiness faster and faster, and to want to flee from misfortune. But perhaps misfortune will catch up with us anyway, at least when we are exhausted. Perhaps we can slow down our pace, become more relaxed and look for happiness within ourselves instead of ahead of us.
Apart from these more spiritual considerations, for me personally religious opinions tend to play a subordinate role. But of course I also think about this, and even as a child I asked the question of questions: ‘Why was I of all people born with this condition spina bifida and dependent on a wheelchair?’ I received the answer back in my childhood in the form of an equally matter-of-fact and simple counter-question: ‘Why not you of all people?’
As to whether I believe in God or not, I won’t go into that here. Just this much: if he exists, I am convinced that he is an unconditionally loving God who according to the above principles neither judges, condemns nor evaluates. Everything is of equal value or indeed not even subject to a value system. Whether I can walk or not is about as irrelevant to God as the fact that I have brown eyes or (grey) brown hair. In this he has no intention, no deeper meaning, nor is he trying to tell me anything. Nor is it a punishment. He just doesn’t seem to attach the same importance to fate as we humans do. He does not make value judgements about it. But quite right, in the end primarily it is we humans who have to deal with our suffering and not God (if we see him as separate from us), and the question of ‘why’ can be helpful, or not if we never find a satisfactory answer.
There is, however, one question that I hardly ever ask myself any more: ‘What if you weren’t in a wheelchair?’ I accept myself as I am, and as there is little I can do to change my situation, this question is superfluous. I have been very lucky in my life and enjoy the many privileges I have received. Thanks to the wheelchair, I discovered wheelchair athletics and a wonderful sporting career has unfolded. Nonetheless, the wheelchair would certainly not be my first choice of means of transportation if there should be a next life.
‘You should take things as they come. But you should also make sure that things happen the way you want them to happen.’ Curt Goetz