I'd love to be mentally strong. Who wouldn't love to be mentally strong? Though I don't know what it means, exactly. The ability to bend iron girders with the power of thought? Brain burpees? A grey matter glute bridge? Remembering where I’ve put my phone? It used to be the number I couldn't remember, now it's the actual phone. Not a clue. Could someone ring me, please? Shit. It's on vibrate. Oh. It was in my hand all along. I'm using it to write this. That's embarrassing. See? So mentally feeble.
Luckily, I’m a habitue of the social medias and came across a veritable Charles Atlas course for my flabby, milk-pudding cerebellum. Better still, it purports to be self-help guidelines from the Buddha himself. Titled Zen Tips To be Mentally Strong, it’s a ten-point guide to being as cognitively hench as Siddartha himself. Let’s have a look.
That's so him. His exact phrasing. I can hear the voice: "Now, Kalamas, I tell you, stop expecting from everyone." What does the Buddha, who definitely said these words, mean by this? He's saying people are largely unreliable, and anything you want to do you will have to do for yourself. Focus on your own dreams, your own goals, your own you. People will try to crowd you with the hot mess of their lives. Forget them. You’re a knife through butter, a cutlass parting their screaming meat. Communities never work. Networks are a time-wasting bureaucracy. You’re alone on a dead planet clawing through ashes with splintered fingers. Oh, did I miss your birthday? Sorry, I was being the last, lonely man in a desert of hot, spiky dust. Maybe next year.
"You make your own luck in this life, son. Pint of numbers? Alright, Dave, do the honours. *snort*"
Filmmakers of the 80's, 90's, and whenever Love Actually came out, please note: standing outside your beloved’s bedroom playing Peter Gabriel songs on a boom box up at them, or visiting your best friend's wife at Christmas with a selection of cue cards asking her to lose the zero and get with the hero or, indeed, editing her husband out of their wedding video, where you were best man, does not fly anymore. Not cool. That sort of behaviour is psychotic. Bloody hell, what’s wrong with you, Richard Curtis? You’re married to Sigmund Freud’s great-granddaughter. What would he have made of it? Something penisy. He was a penisy guy.
What the Buddha is saying, in his weird isolationist way, is let them come to you. Let other people do the begging. Let them crawl on their bellies, declaring their love. You won't even notice because, Rule 1, you were focusing on yourself.
I'm sensing a theme. Icy sangfroid, that's the ticket. Pull up the drawbridge, portcullis down. Boil the oil. You want to be like Mr Spock, or a British army officer going into the library with a balloon of brandy and his service revolver. Bank it down. Repress. Internalise all your emotions, until you can safely fart them out in the corridor. Waft them away and go about your day. Whistling.
Or leave the chaos. What are you doing standing around in the middle of some chaos? Anyone would think you like the chao...oh, I see. That's why you're sharing this meme. Yes, right.
Again, sounds just like the Buddha. I can hear that quizzical upturn in his voice that always drove me to distraction. Not everything is a question, O serene one.
Some things feel personal: a sock on the jaw, a catty remark about your napkin etiquette, a three-star review from a former friend. But it isn’t personal. Each blow to your puffy face, each back-handed compliment on Goodreads, is a manifestation of their pain, their unhappiness. Which they’re taking out on you, for some reason. Rise above it. Empathise with their unevolved miseries, even as you pick teeth from the floor with a broken hand.
Buddha was speaking over a thousand years ago when he said these words he genuinely said. There's no way they were typed up by a wellness instructor who developed some pretty interesting theories about psychiatry and the efficacy of vaccinations during the lockdown. So, when Buddha tells you to walk away from toxic people - a description he used ALL THE TIME - he couldn't have imagined, in his wildest dreams, the invention of the bicycle. He was dealing with the world as he saw it. But it’s permissible to use a bike, a car, a tugboat, any mode of transport at all, the important thing is to get away from the toxic people, once you've identified them as solely toxic, and therefore irredeemably evil. Just get out of there.
Unless "toxic" is your "type". Then, sadly, you're powerless. You'll just have to go back again and again. You can't fight against "type".
One thing though: should you really be taking life advice from someone who couldn't even imagine a bicycle? Hmm. It's not like you were asking him to imagine a Tamagotchi or Billy Zane. It's two wheels and a saddle, mate. I mean, really.
I do this and, yes, I got rid of all my problems, save one. I have oodles of solutions. I am solution rich. You could wash your hands in my solutions for so long they'd be smoothed into pink, riverbed pebbles. The only problem I have, is that I no longer remember the problems these solutions are for. But, I guess, if you can't remember the problems for your solutions, you can't have had too many problems in the first place, am I right? I'd high five someone but, by adhering to the tenets of Buddhism, I am alone. Which is not a problem. It's a solution.
Always.
"I reckon I can fly this plane." "How hard can defusing that bomb be? No, I haven't any experience, but it's just wires and wire-cutters, isn't it? C'mon, let the dog see the rabbit." "I reckon I'd be an excellent President."
Believe in yourself.
Always.
Oh. Well, that's not really one, is it? That's just a recap. Lazy Buddha only came up with 9. But he's a busy guy. Your mental flabbiness is not his problem. Let's look back at his teaching:
Focus on yourself. Life is shit. Don't look for love. Display no emotion. When people talk to you ignore them or decide they're toxic and cut them out of your life. Concentrate on only one part of any equation and, above all, believe in yourself. Don’t not believe in yourself and, above all, don't believe you'll fuck everything up, despite a lifetime of empirical evidence, believe the opposite of that, based on, what? Hope? Recklessness? Solipsism?
Wow, Buddha buddy. You dark.
John Patrick Higgins is a playwright, short story writer, screenwriter and director. He lives in Belfast.