Muddling Through Life & Love

In my last post I spoke of my greatest blunder namely, trying to solve all problems using my intellect alone. I spoke about how that caused me unhappiness in my career because I did NOT balance my intellect with my heart!  

I ended that post with the vital lesson I learned that chasing income alone in our career is never successful, unless our heart is also in it!

The moral of the story above is that even if we have a mundane job, we can be happy if we have a great attitude. Of course we should never forget our ultimate goal of doing something we really enjoy while using our talents fully!

Part 2 of Muddling Through Life is about Muddling Through Love. It talks about how my unbalanced approach to life affected not only my career but also my personal relationships because it made me extremely judgmental of others.

Being Judgmental of Others

For a long time I never even suspected that being judgmental of others is a huge mistake, one that could cause so much unhappiness! 

Perhaps judging things was a habit I picked up from young because I had always been taught to judge things as 'good or bad', 'right or wrong', 'black or white', etc. Rarely was I told about the middle-ground or gray areas, such as white lies and so on.

By making split-second judgments of other people just because of certain quirks or mannerisms of theirs, I was not able to fully appreciate them. By only looking at certain aspects of a person I was behaving like the blind men in the old Indian fable below:

In the above story, each one of the blind men was partly right about one aspect of an elephant but NONE of them knew the complete truth about an elephant. The moral of this fable is that one cannot be stubbornly adamant, thinking that one's own limited viewpoint is the only truth.

Similarly, if I had taken the time to get to know the people properly, I would have realized that they were unique, multi-faceted, complex persons with their own good qualities, and thus been able to cherish them.

I have found out from personal experience that in any relationship, it is this mistake of being judgmental (by using intellect alone) that causes the greatest unhappiness. This blunder is also one that taught me the biggest lesson in life about relationships.

My Biggest Lesson in Life:

The biggest lesson I learnt in life came out of my blunder of being judgmental. Because I never gave as much value to the heart as I did to my mind, I have often been guilty of going against the sentiment in the quote below by Tennyson:

My own idea was quite the opposite: "It is better not to fall in love, than to suffer rejection or becoming love-lorn!"

To protect myself from the pain of rejection, I never let myself get too close to anyone; I never allowed myself to fall in love fully!

That does not mean I never felt love! I did, but often it was with the 'idea of love', rather than with the person. That is why I could be touched and even moved to tears by books and movies but never felt like crying at funerals. Even with friends I was a little aloof - keeping a part of myself very private.  

Bachelor Days

My taking up dance classes turned out to be a boon for me when I got to Kuantan, at that time a small town on the East Coast of Pahang state. I met a few college mates there who were working in various Government Departments.

So, four of us bachelors shared a house with four rooms. The rent was only RM160, so we hired a Chinese lady as a cook for only RM80 per month. Thus by sharing the cost, we enjoyed all the comforts of home even though we each only earned about RM400 per month!

Talking about dancing, regular dances were held at the Town Hall almost every month. There were live bands who played all the favorites such as the Waltz, Rumba, the Jive, the Mexican Shuffle etc. Tables were arranged around the dance area and most of us had only soft drinks as refreshments, while some guys needed liquor to pluck up the courage to dance!

The floor was powdered to make it easy for our shoes to move smoothly.  When the music started playing, initially the floor used to remain vacant because no one wanted to be start the ball rolling. So, it was normally my good friend (let's call him Rama) and me who were always first on the dance floor. After the ice was broken, everyone else joined in enthusiastically. 

These monthly dances were the main entertainment (except for movies) for the majority of us who came from the West Coast to work there. (Remember that there were no color TV or the Internet in those days.)

However, during the monsoon season towards the end of the year, we used to take turns organizing smaller parties at our homes. Those who were organizing the parties in their homes would have to arrange the music (33 RPM records, players and speakers) while we all shared the cost of food and drinks.

Thus, I was right in assuming that I would be able to meet many girls through dancing but after three years I had met dozens of dance partners but no soul-mate, not even close!

It was entirely my fault of course - I never gave anyone the chance to get close because I kept judging them. In fact I would never go with the same partner to a dance more than twice.  So much so I got an undeserved title of 'playboy'.  The reason I never went to a dance with the same partner more than two times was twofold:

• The first was because I did not believe in leading any girl on. Having decided that I would not be interested in a serious relationship, I would immediately stop asking her out because I felt it would not be fair to her.  In those days the public, in true male-chauvinistic fashion, considered it okay for a boy to be linked to more than one girl but not the reverse! So, partly it was for their sake.
  
• The second reason was that I was too fussy about the girls whom I was getting to know. When my housemates would say that this one or the other looked ideal for me, I would begin my litany of gripes about them! Her voice is too high-pitched, or too hoarse, or she waddles as she walks, her hair is too short, too curly etc.

With such an attitude it was no surprise that I never found a suitable girl to propose to! This elusive and idiotic search of mine went on for several years, until at age 31, I finally decided to get married on the insistence of a close friend of mine who had gotten married a few years earlier. 

My friend enticed me to a meeting with the girl and her parents, by telling me that the girl looked like one of my favorite Indian actresses. 

I was really taken up with her looks, especially her smile. I agreed to get engaged, thinking that it was high time anyway since most of my friends were already married by then!

Muddling through Marriage

As you can guess, my carrying around such a silly superficial attitude about others could only make for a miserable marriage. I will not be going into the dismal details here, except to say that my judgmental attitude caused both of us so much pain for nearly twenty years.

NOTE: That doesn't mean that there was never any joy in our marriage - the birth of our children were a great source of joy for both of us. 

The first time I ever understood what 'unconditional love' meant was when our first child was born - where we love the child without any expectation.

All other types of love (whether between friends or romantic partners) would always have to be 'reciprocal'. That is, we tend to love another only if and when our love is returned! 

If it is unrequited, then that love could turn to anger, dislike and even hatred (e.g. we hear of family feuds, of 'women scorned', of 'spurned lovers', of old friends who become bitter enemies, etc.) These are all cases of what I call 'reciprocal love'.  But a parent's love is usually unconditional, with no strings attached!

Let me get back to the story of the marriage woes. As an example of how bad it used to be, there was one time when our teenage son told us in exasperation: "Why don't you guys just separate if you can't stay together without fighting!"

So, do you think there is any way for such a marriage to be salvaged? I am glad to report that there was and we did salvage it - as proved by the fact that now my wife and I are still together after more than 46 years!

I had written up that whole experience as a short story (using fictional names) in PDF format.  It is entitled "Saving a Marriage Headed for the Rocks!"

If any reader is interested in finding out exactly how this marriage was saved, just fill up your email address below to download your free PDF.

Lesson Learnt: 

The greatest lesson I learned from the above described experiences is that I need to Balance my Intellect with my Heart in order to have a happy, fulfilled life!

The word 'balance' is very important! You have seen what happens when I used my Intellect alone to solve problems. Neither is it wise to use the Heart alone in trying to find solutions! 

If we live by the heart alone in our relationships, we tend to be obsessively emotional and tend to get into depression or even have suicidal tendencies! Just following our heart alone in our career may cause us to end up drifting from one job to another without any success.

On the other hand if we try to live by intellect alone in our relationships , we tend to be cold, undemonstrative and aloof which also creates its own misery! In matters of careers, this will cause us to end up in prosaic, mundane jobs that make for a cheerless life!

Therefore, we are able to live our best lives only when we give equal importance to our Heart and to our Mind!