An experiment in getting life to work better
Gerry Maguire Thompson
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about recently: what would happen if I spent more time on loving what’s happening and less time wishing things were different? The thought has arisen from my meditation practice and prompted a good deal of investigative reflection.
Why would I want to do this?
Wishing things were different from how they are (I’m going to call it WTWD) is one of the more potentially problematic aspects of being human; no other species seems to bother with it. WTWD, obviously, is often fruitful, leading us to take action to make things better. But be honest: how much time do you expend on it that doesn’t bring any benefit, or that indeed adds to your personal quota of suffering?
For me, the answer is a great deal. I do a lot of WTWD: wishing I had more money, wishing the weather was better, wishing people would be how I want them to be, wishing I was more popular….tons of stuff like that, almost all the time. Add to this the time I spend absorbed in dwelling on an activity other than the one I’m currently engaged in: what am I going to have for dinner this evening? Where am I going after this Pilates class? What’s the wife going to say when I arrive home without the tofu? That’s a whole other way of escaping from ‘what is’.
Perhaps even less worthwhile is the time and energy I spend on regret – that exquisite self-inflicted torture, making WTWD retrospective: wishing I’d accepted that job offer back in 1978, wishing my books were more successful than they’ve been, wishing I hadn’t made things so blinking difficult for myself. Another wonderful pursuit that only the human species spend time on.
Now add into the mix how I’m forever making my happiness conditional on life meeting very strict criteria – my preferred outcomes for every given situation – and consequently my efforts to control things in order to secure those outcomes. Like: if only my next book is a best-seller, then I’ll be happy; or if I get to live in a beautiful old cottage in the countryside, then I could be really happy; or if the screenplay I’m writing becomes a smash-hit movie, then I’d definitely get everything I need to be happy…. but not until then. So you see, I have all these diverse habits which together are serving to make my life worse rather than better. What am I like?
How does it work?
That’s why I’ve been wondering about this ‘Loving What Is’ thing. So how would it work? It looks like the first step is to start being more in the present moment. Not rocket science, just good old-fashioned mindfulness: being with whatever is happening right now, wherever I happen to be at the time. Seeking to savour each unique moment for what it is – not dwelling on what it might lead to, or what happened to get me here. It soon became clear that the content of those other thoughts – about what might happen in the future or what did or didn’t happen in the past – are not actually there in the present time. It’s me that’s bringing them in – and I can stop doing that and leave them where they belong: elsewhere in time.
So I’ve been spending a bit more time absorbed in what is. I have to say it doesn’t always feel great – sometimes I might just be more present with feeling not so good – but at least I’m being with that rather than wishing things weren’t that way. So that’s a start.
But as the song says, “What’s love got to do with it?” Loving What Is (LWI) has to be more than just common-or-garden mindfulness; it must go further than just experiencing and being with how things are in this moment; the game-changer when the application of love comes into it. To me that appears to entail going into a deeper acceptance of what is, to the point where the wish for things to be different is subsumed by something greater.
The human experience of love has a powerful influence on how we humans perceive and interact with reality. So loving it means entering into whatever is and embracing it, maybe transcending its downsides, being open to new possibilities. It’s a journey from tolerating, to accepting, to appreciating , to perhaps even being enchanted with it. Love is not necessarily a soppy, sentimental thing – it can be extremely radical. Sometimes it seems that love is what comes in to fill the gap left by the disappearance of that preoccupation with unfulfilled outcomes and all that other WTWD stuff. It seems easiest in meditation, but can happen at other times too.
The transformative or transcendent potential of love has been reported for thousands of years. It’s been suggested as a means of connecting with the infinite, with what lies at the heart of being, with universal consciousness – however you want to call it – in spiritual practices from Christian contemplation to Buddhist compassion to Sufi mysticism. There’s something unlimited and timeless to draw on here.
LWI for me is certainly not something I can do all the time; it’s more about recognising opportunities wherever possible. It’s about choosing consciously to switch out of Wishing Things Were Different mode, and ease into absorption in the core of how things really are, in the now.
My experience has been that LWI can last for a while, but is more commonly rather fleeting. On occasion it might just amount to noticing what I’m feeling, and feeling positive rather than being unconsciously preoccupied with wanting to feel different: I notice that I’m disappointed about not being invited to some dinner party/ that I’m enjoying this school reunion more than expected/ that I’m feeling impatient, or grumpy or content. Oftentimes it’s a moderating rather than transformative experience – I might not be 100% loving whatever is, but I’m not quite as pissed off as I might otherwise be. So LWI may just be providing a temporary suspension of the tyranny of WTWD – but often that’s enough to make all the difference. And on other occasions it’s a profound and transcendental, even blissful experience.
LWI certainly doesn’t mean acquiescing in all situations and doing nothing about changing them. But it can bring more clarity about the difference between those moments for taking action, and the many more moments when even thinking about it is pointless. It means putting attention on these life-out-there matters when a decision needs to be made or when action can be taken, but not being preoccupied the rest of the time. So, more clarity about when it’s time for doing and when it’s time for being. Obviously there are going to be many circumstances where things are so challenging that it’s not an option to feel anything positive about them, when LWI just isn’t doable. And there will be all kinds of situations that other people are clearly in, where it would be entirely inappropriate to suggest it anything like that.
How’s it going?
Fiddling around with LWI like this has definitely improved my experience of facing the challenges of everyday life. I feel less bound up in my obsessive outcome anxiety – constantly and desperately hoping things are going to turn out the way I want. I can enjoy the way things are for a little more of the time – while walking in nature, while meeting and talking to someone on the street, or being with the yoga postures I’m doing rather than whizzing off somewhere else in my mind. And on a good day I do a modicum of letting people be the way they want to be.
I still want to make the world a better place and be an activist for positive change (getting corporations and politicians to give a fig about climate change would be a start). But I don’t have to be getting unconstructively depressed about it 24 hours a day. Let’s face it: it’s hard to let go of attachment to desired outcomes; everybody wants the things they want. But the bottom line is that we can’t really control how things are going to turn out. It’s harder to change the things outside your self than the things inside – inside yourself is the main thing you have control of.
Along the way, working on the habit of LWI has encouraged me to think a little more deeply about what really matters, what are my real priorities, what is actually essential to having a positive experience of life. It means letting go, when I can, of attachment to outcomes that I thought were essential to proper happiness, but aren’t really: craving fame, wealth, success, status or the relentless quest to find organic fish fingers. And I’m being slightly less angry, slightly less controlling, slightly less disappointed with life.
It’s a work in progress, obviously. And like many things, the more you do it the more natural it becomes. I find myself loving waiting for a bus, loving washing the dishes, loving listening to people complaining about the weather, loving (or at least liking) doing my tax return. And now I’m finding that when I wake up at night, instead of lying there getting more and more annoyed at being awake and trying harder and harder to get back to sleep, I endeavour instead to love that moment of being awake. Paradoxically, when I can do this it’s a far quicker way of getting back to sleep.
But is that really a paradox? Is it possible there are ways in which LWI can be just as good or better than WTWD based strategies for changing things for the better? Now that could be worth looking into. Ultimately, what we’re really talking about here is how to gain a bit more freedom, a little more joy in just being alive.
What do you think about all of this? Is there something in it, or is it all nonsense? Either way, it’d be great to hear from you.
“You have control over action alone,
never over its fruits. Live not for
the fruits of action, nor attach
yourself to inaction.”
Bhagavad-Gita Chapter 2 Verse 47
Gerry is a professional author, screenwriter and coach to other authors. You can contact him via
