Working with what you have

Zorba the Greek(1964)

One young man approached me the other day wanting to know why his life wasn't going anywhere. His face was drawn, and his eyes lacked the life-force that you might expect of someone so young.

I asked him: Have you got anyone close you can talk to? 

"No," he said "and I never have."

Not an unlikeable dude, I thought. 

In fact, he had something about him. He was kind of "spikey" though.

He spoke in a half-absorbed kind of way that was a little cold and muffled as if covered by a mile high thick layer of smothering  sand. You might even describe his presence as "scratchy." The feeling I got from him was kind of like talking to the static on a television set. His voice, as loud as it got, was muted somehow, but not in any audible way. Muted on the soul level. Long story short, he didn't elicit the kind of feeling you want to have when you're around people.

But I was patient. 

I wanted to push further, without him resisting contact with his wounds.

"Why do you think you are not finding the right people" I asked.

"I've tried, but all the people I want to be with push me away."

"What about the ones you don't want anything to do with?"

"Those... Oh. Well..."

He stopped like a heart that was on life support, and may stop forever.

"Yes?" I interjected, hoping to save him from that situation.

If I'm honest with you - and I don't want to sound heartless (and heartless was exactly what he sounded) - but those are the nerds, the grunts, the teachers and people life has thrown away. Church people often. The 9-5 crowd. They talk to me, at least. I guess that's something I can say for them."

"So it sounds to me like you're not in the kind of crowd you want to be with then?"

"I think that's safe to say."

He then went on to tell me that his track record was as grim as the backside of a refuse truck. He'd had a bright patch in his life a few years back, before the covid outbreak, when many of his dreams were still alive. 

Then, covid hit and fast-forward to today, he was pushing harder than ever in his work at a tutorial center as an ESL teacher, but it was a dull, lifeless sort of pushing, and there was nothing in it that really brought that spark back. People just turned away from him. It was hard to explain. He was offended by their lack of interest.

We went back and forth for a while on that boat. Because that's where we were: The boat to Samui from Donsak. We'd both loaded our bikes earlier onto the cargo hold. He told me about his girlfriend, about what had been. He told me a lot of things that I don't care to remember. 

That's when it hit me. His problem wasn't a lack of influential friends. It was a lack of peace. It was a lack of peace that goes down to the level of the spirt and the meaning isn't to be found in outside things. 

It also hit me that without peace, every other achievement in this life is totally useless; and people sense that. They want to stay away from it. Because there's a major lack of inner peace in the world to begin with. 

"Maybe", I thought... "Maybe you just need to work with what you have." But I didn't say it out loud.