A quick test

It will take just a minute as it actually consists of one question only:

In your opinion, is the universe we live in friendly or hostile?

If by any chance Einstein, who supposedly believed this to be one of the most fundamental questions we can ever ask ourselves, lived today he would have given you the following test key:

If you believe that the universe is a hostile place, you will work hard all your life on building walls around  you in order to protect yourself from it.

On the other hand, if you see the world as basically friendly, you will spend your lifetime on building    bridges around you.

Well, it’s not that hard to guess what would anyone who has been anywhere near the war choose as an option. Does it mean that these people, even if they escape the war and outlive its terror, are in a way crippled for life? Are the tins of canned beef and beans, powdered milk, bags of flour and containers of oil nearly enough to make up for all the damage that has been done? Ok, the patient survived but what about their quality of life afterwards and how long it will last?

I can tell you that the situation is not hopeless. Everything is reversible, even the hostile image of the world. You just have to give it another chance, no matter how hard it might seem. I think that as soon as one shows some determination and willingness to try, an opportunity will show up.

In my case, I think it all began from looking at the world through the eyes of a person who is more confident about the goodness of other people than anyone else I have ever met. This friend of mine loves taking photos, especially of people he, by the way, so easily makes contact with. So I had the privilege to wander around the world seeing it the way he does. This easygoing, unrestrained approach to people seemed to me as amazing as their smiling eyes that would in return shine back from his photos. A little later, when I discovered Couchsurfing, I’ve come to feel some of this shiny warmth even more intensely by meeting people in person. From then on, everything has been a lot easier.

Julian Barnes, one of the best contemporary English writers and a very smart guy by the way, would probably drop in here to say that you have to believe in the world just as you have to believe in love. And even if it lets you down again, which is very likely, if not inevitable, you still must go on believing in it as otherwise the world will come down on you with all its heaviness. Eventually it all comes down to building bridges or walls in life and I’m sure everyone will agree that building bridges is much more fun.  

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Hello Mr/Ms Harp! 

Do you need a couch?

I’ve always been somewhat shy. I admit it. As a kid, I would hide behind my Dad’s legs trying to avoid the shower of kisses coming down on me from my over-excited relatives. Having my cheeks all sticky and wet afterwards didn’t help much either. 

I guess seeing people at their worst some ten years later, helped even less. How can you ever again think highly of humans, once you feel the shower of bombs coming down on you on a number of different occasions? Even if this can be ascribed to the advancement  of the latest extermination tools that elegantly reduce direct human contact to seeing people as too many dots on the screen, there still remain so many disturbing examples of people whose hands have been covered in fresh blood from cutting somebody’s throat. For those who escape all these wide ranging forms of the war’s brutality and violence, still comes another unexpected challenge of overcoming the usual rejection and hostility refugees encounter on a daily basis. Well, excuse me but one really has to be either blind or stupid or made of stone not to acknowledge it. 

However, there is a good side to it, as once you start thinking of people as inferior to animals, every little act of kindness comes as a miraculous surprise. Rather than being overlooked, any sign of human goodness is much appreciated and supported, especially if it comes from a complete stranger. 

If I had been writing this a couple of years earlier, I would have probably finished here concluding that overall people are to be approached with utmost precaution as very few of them are actually well-meaning. Yet, recently I’ve come to seriously doubt it. 

Ten years ago I could hardly imagine myself going over to somebody’s place after just a couple of hours of conversation, or inviting them to my place. This was reserved to very good friends and relatives only. However, a few days ago I got stuck at my new friends’ place until past midnight talking, laughing and completely forgetting about whatever reason I’d had for being shy and detached. At the end of the last year’s summer, after a couple of months of hanging out with my new friend who turned out to be such a wonderful person, I returned home with eyes full of tears because she was leaving the country and I had already missed her much. Through her I met some more good hearted people whose invitations to birthday parties to some far off places I would have gladly accepted if only I’d had a little more money for travelling. A year ago, I asked another newly met friend to stay over for the weekend and was rewarded with a great company, a big warm hug and even a bigger smile. On another occasion, some of my new friends invited me to their special French pancake dinner party and taught me how to make them myself. And just a month ago I spent one out of many wonderful afternoons with my great friend and conversation companion Elsa at a local café whose overshadowing ripe grapes gave us a shelter from the hot summer sun. I’ve met her quite recently too. And the list could go on and on. Actually, the list was too long to fit into my previously constructed perception of the world so that eventually the perception had to be modified. 

The question is how can somebody who is a bit shy, untrusting or overly cautious get a chance to meet some new people and even make a number of new friends? 

Well, it all began with a couch. However, not the familiar one that you sit down on at your friends place for an occasional chit-chat, or the one that you find at a therapist’s. I have come to believe that there is no advice, talk or consultation that can change your mind frame as effectively as the first-hand experience you acquire yourself. So the couch that I have in mind is much more powerful. It enables you to meet new people through their kindness and goodness. 

The idea was born when a group of travel loving enthusiasts decided to build an online community of like minded people who wanted to help each other travel more easily. They created a network of people who fill in their internet profiles by giving a brief overview of likes and dislikes, interests and friends and most importantly offer help to travellers that happen to come to their part of the world. It may be just a walk, talk, having a tea or coffee together or even letting somebody sleep at your couch for a couple of days. The idea proved to be revolutionary as it gave a whole new dimension to travelling. Not only did it become more affordable, but at the same time more interesting and rewarding as well. For how can you possibly feel what the new place is like and how it lives and breathes if you don’t get to know its people? And for those who don’t have enough money to travel around the world themselves it is now possible to welcome the world at their own home.

Here is where you can research into it yourself: Couchsurfing

To tell the truth, I was initially very skeptic about it but luckily also curious enough to give it a try. Coffee after coffee, lemonade or tea and I could slowly feel the change coming on. Certainly not all of these new acquaintances were life changing, yet quite a number of them were. What is even more important is that once you let down your guard, other people start approaching you more easily as well, including those outside the couchsurfing community.  

So these days I’m looking forward to having some of my new friends over for dinner, lunch or sleep-over and as soon as having enough money coincides with having enough free time, I’ll fly off to visit some of these great people all around the world.

Crossroads

When I turned 10, a new girl came into my class and soon became one of my best friends. We would walk back home together for a while and then stand for a long time talking at the point where our roads separated. Two years later it looked as if our roads would never cross again as at the outbreak of war we didn’t have time to say goodbye. Her mother was of an undesirable nationality so I knew that they all had to leave. Yet, I had no idea of where they might have finally settled.

One year later I was in a different town, attending a different school and sitting in a different class when a new refugee girl from a far away place joined us and filled in an empty spot on my right side. I was relieved. I felt less stared at and whispered about. To other kids I was a “black sheep” and after discovering that my head became a habitat for a family of lice that had probably migrated from some of my constantly scratching classmates, I started feeling that sheep and I really do have something in common. I cut my hair short and sat for hours out in the sun like a chimpanzee with my mum working with her fingers through my hair until she would get tired saying “I’ll never exterminate these nasty bastards”. After all the smelly powders, shampoos and special extermination techniques she finally did succeed and I returned back to school, again relieved. And there, my new fellow refugee was waiting for me impatiently, eager to ask me a question “Do you know a girl whose name is… ?“ and just like that, one after another the sound of a name I hadn’t heard for a whole year and a half rolled out of her mouth. I was paralyzed for a few seconds before I answered with “Yes, but how do you know her?”. What followed was a bout of joy, clapping and hooraying on her side, before my curiosity was eventually satisfied. She told me a story of a letter that travelled for months determined to fulfill its mission.

Miles away, in a different country my crossroads friend wrote down “I’ll hope this letter will reach you…” , put it in an envelope and set it sail to my grandparents’ village with only my name and my father’s name on it. That was all she knew. There was no address. The letter reached the village but ended up in the wrong hands of a girl with the same name, surname and father’s name. So my double opened up the letter and was struck with this bizarre coincidence. However, the girl decided to try to help out and find the missing person so she searched high and low, all to no avail. Some months later she told the whole story to her newly arrived refugee cousin who was accidentally placed in my class to sit right next to me. By the time I answered the letter and sent it back to my friend, many months had passed. She later told me that she had almost given up hope on ever receiving it so when it finally arrived she jumped all around like crazy.

I’ve never stopped wondering whether this strange sequence of events was just a coincidence or something more than that? Can it be that when two people long for each other miracles can happen? Or perhaps future knew that we had some pretty hard challenges before us and so decided to make it a little easier for us? I leave all the options open, but I believe that in the years to come, our long conversations that moved from the street onto the paper meant a lot to both of us. There was somebody out there for whom you were not an alien, a connection with the world familiar to you that at the time seemed as if it had never really existed.

The two of us still keep in touch. Not as often as we used to but there is always this air of familiarity and closeness whenever we meet, even after a long time of no contact. I visited her a couple of days ago and she told me she still hasn’t been back to the old place. She doesn’t want to go alone and is looking for a chance to travel with somebody. I was later thinking of how it would be nice to do this adventure together. We would probably end up walking to that same crossroads together and just stand there talking for hours.

Hello Mr/Ms Harp!

Are you a refugee who sticks to your clan because you feel at ease with those who know what you’ve been through?
And you think that the rest of the world would never understand it anyway?
You believe “they” wouldn’t even understand your jokes, let alone your dreams and fears?

Of course, your fellows in war, or whatever, will understand you better but is that all there really is to  friendship? Don’t you think you’re missing a lot if you just stick with one group of people gathered around the same idea or need? Aren’t you as an individual made up of a little more than only one experience no matter how much it influenced you?

Or you may be one of those people who instead of sticking their nose into other people’s business and life prefer to think about who they are and what they are here for?

Well, that is a good start, I would say, a precondition for any self-improvement! However, sitting alone in your room, mulling over things and pondering might not yield many answers to your questions. Are you even aware of what you like and don’t like? How can you know whether you like mango if you have never tried one? How can you explore yourself if there is no one you can relate to? The physicists would put it like this:

Imagine yourself alone in the midst of nothingness and then try to tell me how large you are. (Eddington, A. S. The Nature of the Physical World).

People often forget that through meeting other people not only do you discover what connects you but also what differs you. How else would you know what makes you distinct and one of a kind? And how far do you expect to get in this self-exploration process if you restrict yourself to hanging out with people with whom you only have certain things in common? And if this always happens to be the same group of people?

Just as you can recognise that you were (un)fortunate to get your nose from your father or flat feet from your mother so you can recognise little pieces of yourself in your friends. The more different these pieces are, the more puzzles you’ve put together. The only downside may be birthdays and other social gatherings when all these people you have something in common with are, well, seated next to one another only to discover that they are mutually not very compatible.

However, as birthdays are once a year, I think the idea should not be altogether rejected. It came clear to me after reading a book by Anthony Storr on the Integrity of the Personality. After describing the process of how a young soul gradually acquires its form within a family, he continues to follow its lifelong development and emphasises the role other people also play in modelling it. I think the following passage sums it all up nicely:

Personality is like a harp with many strings. Not all the strings are plucked at once and some may lie silent throughout life. Others may be set into vibration by the impact of personalities with the same frequency.  

The beauty and the complexity of the melody you will produce is therefore not just up to you but rather up to you in relation to other people. Each and every person that has entered our lives and stayed there at least for a little while has struck a chord or two, added a few tones, minor or major, some already familiar and some never heard before.

Too familiar to hate

A refugee girl was telling her life story on TV when the interviewer asked her:

“How do you feel about the people who belong to the nationality that caused you and your family so much pain?”

and the girl answered:

“I know that people who belong to the same nationality are not all good or bad, but I still feel very uncomfortable with the issue. I cannot forgive or forget what happened…”.

If couple of years ago somebody had asked me the same question, my answer would have been similar. And, oh wonder, in her case I was one of those people she was referring to! My nationality gives her creeps and nightmares! She would be uncomfortable in my company! Somebody sees me as a threat!

To make it even more absurd, in the first part of the interview the girl talked about the lack of understanding people belonging to her nationality showed for refugees such as herself.  And yet, there I was, her much feared and anxiety giving fellow human, sitting and thinking how familiar it all was to me. I would have known much of what she’d been through even if she hadn’t said anything further from the word refugee.

It left me wondering about what really connects people. Is it nationality or experience and hardship that you go through?
And what is a nationality after all? Something devised to divide people and make them fight? Would this world be simpler and more peaceful without it?

Perhaps in a fairytale if you ask me. As long as there are greedy minds there will be wars. People are not evil but are easy to manipulate and anything can serve the purpose: nationality, religion, colour of skin, shape of eyes, nose, toes, you name it. I see people as kids with beards, mustaches, breasts and grown-up voices. They've learnt a lot but are still quite naive. You can easily trick them into believing anything you want and then also doing anything you want, even if it is hating, fighting, killing...

However, connecting opposite sides, listening to the life stories of the "supposed-to-be-enemies" can help you realise that both you and your neighbours had been manipulated into hating each other because the stage was perfectly set by a group of manipulation experts, and then sure you can refuse to be a part of it! Killings cannot be easily written off as childish behaviour and the ravaging mass of deluded people is much to be feared of. Yet, no matter how fanatically deviant the world may seem at the time, you should always keep in mind that some human goodness lies hidden back and works silently and anonymously.

After all, is it possible to be enemies with somebody who speaks your feelings and thoughts even better than perhaps you would yourself?