Of luck, happiness and all the weird bus connections

Who would have thought thinking about buses can bring someone to interesting philosophical reasoning. I would have. This happened to me once already. I was waiting with my friend for a bus number 6 to arrive to take us home. A bus with the number 20 blinking on its led screen approached. As it stopped the number 20 suddenly changed to 6. Just like that. I was thrown aback. How even a small change, like a number, can have a great impact on one’s perceiving of destiny. Before the bus changed from 20 to 6 I knew instantly with just looking at it, where it came from and I knew where it was going. But with that change, a bus, that was “predestined” to go one way, suddenly became a totally new, different bus, with new sets of bus stops and the past that does not correspond with the one presumed for the number displayed.

I wondered then how this can be applied to human experience. We all know how everyday common incidents can affect the course of our lives. And similarly to the bus situation, when I knew the path before and after it changed from one number to the other - although they couldn’t be more different - I always know I am on the “right” path, the one path that I am living right now, all the time. Never mind the constant changes of hearts that I have. Which I do. A lot. It is because the reality we perceive is not the reality of chances and options but of things that occur, that through outcome of random events manifest from a cloud of possibilities.

And this is what I wanted to talk about in this entry. Being happy or lucky. Wait what? It will all make sense in the end. Just stick with me.

Of talking, listening and the importance of being silent

When I was 20 something and living in Ljubljana, I got into a dispute with my landlady. In the heat of the moment I must have said some really mean stuff to her, because what she said then in a very calm and soothing voice still echoes in my mind. “You’ll see, that tongue of yours will hit you in your life!” I did not know what she meant then so I simply grinned at her disbelievingly.

When I was a kid, I had a similar experience. I remember it was Sunday. I know that, because Sundays were the only days that the whole family sat down and had a family Sunday lunch together. We had the traditional meat soup, followed by mashed potatoes and cooked meat from soup - a true peasant’s lunch. Somehow I got upset with my mom and again in the heat of the moment I called her “a goat” (in Slovenian language that is quite an insult). She just looked at me and said: “You know, if you hit me, the pain will go away, but words, they stay. You can never take them back!” One would’ve thought, I’d learned back then. Obviously I had not. It is easy to lose the perspective, when one is overwhelmed with emotion.

The pain we feel after the words have been said come from regret that we hurt people we love the most. Remorse is then futile. One cannot take words back. No matter how un-meant they were, no matter how un-true they were, no matter how un-anything they were. Any explanation looks like a cheap excuse. No “I am sorry” can ctrl+Z it. Words were thought, said and received. They were then taken, interpreted and became a catalyst of physical manifestation called emotion. Sure, my mom has forgiven me; sure my landlady did so, too. Or maybe she simply forgot that awful boy that caused her pain. No matter how justified those words seemed to me at that moment, in the aftermath I felt terrible. I felt ashamed and I felt sad that people, who allowed me to be even a smallest part of their life, were hurt only because I was angry, dissatisfied, unfulfilled and childish.

That got me thinking. It is not the words that we say that are the problem. The problem seems to be rooted in a previous state of the conversation. Once emotions overflow us barriers are already lifted and the tsunami like wave of destruction has been released. In order not to succumb to it, one has to listen first. One needs to keep the calm inside and listen. That is how I learnt the importance of being silent. Let me explain.