‘Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness as well as disease.’
Christmas passed uneventfully. I ate, drank, slept and watched a lot of television. Rachel got me a book featuring pictures of the Nativity as acted out by dressed-up guinea pigs. It made me laugh. The fact that I was laughing again was a good sign. Our family managed to get through it without killing each other and two weeks of National Lampoon’s Vacation and purple Quality Streets were a soothing balm on my brain. Normal life.
On New Year’s Eve, I left Mum’s and headed to Rachel’s. She’d gone to Scotland to see friends so I stayed in on my own, which was fine with me.
I’d always hated New Year: the pressure to have the best night ever just because it’s 31st December. Instead of going out, I ate spaghetti bolognese and watched fireworks out of the window. Daisy was in Kerala on a yoga retreat. Sheila was in Mexico and Helen was at a house party. Gemma was with her family. I wondered what Sarah was doing.
I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up when Jools Holland and his gang were singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
Thursday 1st January. The start of a new year.
By now I was supposed to have gone through twelve self-help books. There should have been highs and lows, tears and revelations, romance and rejection, all coming together to form some sort of profoundly moving (but neat and tidy) epiphany.
The new and improved me would have felt shinier and more enlightened. Oh, and skinnier and richer, obviously. Ideally with a cashmere-sweater-wearing hottie in the wings. I mean, let’s face it – isn’t that what self-improvement usually comes down to? Money, sex and looks. But I had not become the Perfect Me I’d set out to be. Instead, I had ended the year more of a basket case than ever.
At 12.30am my phone beeped. It was The Greek. ‘Happy New Year! ☺’
I messaged him straight back. ‘You too!’
He replied: ‘I’m sorry I have been quiet. My father has been in hospital. I think of you often. ☺’
I thought of him in Athens, caring for sick, elderly parents while the Greek economy was also going down the pan. He had real problems.
Dots appeared on the screen. He was still typing.
‘Have you finished your challenge?’
‘I don’t know!’ I replied.
‘Want to talk?’ he messaged.
He Skyped and in the small hours of 1st January I told him everything that had happened since I’d met him that day in the coffee shop.
‘I don’t know whether to keep going with the whole thing or just leave it. I don’t think it’s been very good for me – it’s been extreme,’ I said.
‘Maybe it needs to be extreme for it to change you. When you read the books before, your life did not change, did it?’
‘No.’
‘Now it has changed.’
‘Yeah, but it doesn’t feel like good change.’
‘Maybe you had to be broken down in order to be built into something new,’ he said.
‘But when does the something new come? Right now I’m just broken.’
‘You sound OK to me.’
‘Sorry, I am. I am being dramatic. I feel much better. I rested a lot the last month. How are you?’
He talked about his father’s illness and the stress his mother was under. He was sleeping just a few hours a night, in between caring for them both. I didn’t know how he was doing it.
‘I am their son. They did everything for me and now it’s my turn,’ he said with no hint of resentment or self-pity.
‘What I’m doing must seem so self-indulgent compared to your life,’ I said.
‘I think what you’re doing is great. But remember that you already have a good life and you should enjoy it.’
The next morning, I woke up at 7am on the sofa. Helen had texted at 4am, ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!’ And Sheila had sent a photo of a cocktail and a sunset.
I got up and looked out of the window at grey skies. The street was deserted. Everyone sleeping it off. I put the kettle on and made a coffee. So. Another year. What next? Quit the self-help or keep going? The consensus seemed to be that I needed to stop. Any rational person would say that I needed to stop.
But I didn’t want to. I didn’t know why but I didn’t. I wanted to see this through – I felt sure something good would come of it if I did. But I needed help.
I followed the taxi driver’s advice and went to see a therapist. It started off pretty promisingly.
‘I’m not surprised you’ve come unstuck,’ she said. ‘You’ve been conducting experiments on yourself. You have been your own guinea pig and you’ve had no supervision.’
‘I’d never thought of it like that,’ I replied.
‘Do you know what your unconscious is?’ she asked, leaning forward on her beige leather La-Z-Boy.
‘Not really.’
‘The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts and memories that live below our conscious awareness. What you’ve been doing for the last year is poking at your unconscious, bringing up things you didn’t even know were there. And now they’re coming to the surface, which is why you’re crying and getting angry and having nightmares.’
Then it was exactly as the taxi driver had predicted.
‘So in the dreams,’ she said, ‘it’s your job to save your family?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re not doing it?’
‘Yes, I mean no – I’m not able to save them.’
‘And do you often think it’s your job to save everyone?’
‘No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘Is that a role you take in your family?’
‘Are you going to make this all about my family?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘Let’s see.’
‘Do you think I’m having a breakdown?’ I asked, trying to change the subject.
‘You are having a time when you question everything. It can happen when there’s a big change in life and the old rules you used to live by no longer make any sense.’
‘That’s how I feel now.’
‘And what were you hoping to get out of all this when you started?’
‘I wanted to be happy.’
‘And what does happy mean?’
‘I don’t know – just happy.’
‘None of us can be happy all the time – but what we can be is content. To have some level of peace.’
‘OK, I’d like that then.’
‘So why hasn’t that happened, do you think? You’ve read all these books, absorbed all this wisdom. Why do you think they haven’t helped you?’
‘I don’t know. Do you think self-help works?’
‘I think the problem with self-help books is that you are reading them with the same mind that has made you unhappy. You need an outside perspective to challenge you and show you a different view,’ she said.
That made sense actually.
‘So do you think I should stop doing the books?’ I asked.
‘Do you think you should stop following them?’
Bloody hell – did therapists really do this? The whole turning the question back on you stuff? I thought that was just a joke.
‘No. I want to finish what I set out to do but I worry that this whole thing is just self-indulgent. Why can’t I just get on with life like everyone else?’
‘I don’t think that what you’re doing is self-indulgent. You’re on a journey of self-discovery and that is worthwhile, in my opinion. It’s an investment. An investment in yourself – but you shouldn’t do it on your own.’
Well, you would say that, I thought, and then our time was up. She asked me if I wanted to see her again. I said I’d get back to her. On my way out she asked: ‘Have you read a book called The Power of Now?’
‘No, I have it at home but I couldn’t get past the first couple of pages.’
‘You might like it now.’
And so it was, in January, I found The Book; the book that told me that the best of times will come from the worst.
When I first tried to read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, a couple of years before, I’d thought it was impenetrable New Age gibberish. I couldn’t understand how it had become a number-one bestseller, loved by everyone from Oprah (of course) to Paris Hilton, who took it to jail with her when she was arrested for drink-driving. In fact, I couldn’t understand it, full stop.
Despite being determined to prove that I had a greater – or at least an equal – reading ability to Miss Hilton, I gave up at around page twenty.
Sentences such as ‘It is a misperception of your essential reality that is beyond birth and death, and is due to the limitations of your mind, which, having lost touch with Being, creates the body as evidence of its illusory belief in separation and to justify its state of fear’ were too much for me.
Then there was talk of things called ‘pain bodies’, which are ‘semi-autonomous psychic entities’. Excuse me, what?
This time, however, it was different. This time every weirdly worded sentence read like the truth. Actually, I might capitalize that, just for effect: ‘The Truth’.
For the next three days I read it constantly.
Not since A-level English class when Mrs Batch introduced us to a colour-coded note system to deconstruct Wuthering Heights, had I made so many scribbles in a book. Every other page had an ecstatic ‘YES!!!’ in the margin, whole chunks of text were underlined with stars and exclamation marks by the best bits. I could see why Oprah described Eckhart Tolle as a prophet for our times and I began to suspect that there was more to Paris Hilton than met the eye.
German-born author Eckhart Tolle was a twenty-nine-year-old graduate student living in a bedsit in North London when he had his ‘spiritual awakening’ in 1979. On the night it happened, he was planning to kill himself. After years of constant depression and anxiety, he’d had enough. ‘I cannot live with myself any longer,’ he thought.
But in that moment Tolle had an epiphany: ‘If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the “I” and the “self” that “I” cannot live with.’ He then concluded that only one of these selves was real and, as soon as he realized this, all his negative thoughts stopped.
The next day he woke up and everything was different – he was in a state of ‘uninterrupted deep peace and bliss’. That morning, he writes, ‘I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born.’
Tolle had transcended thoughts – the voice in his head.
Tolle explains that most of us spend our lives with a constant ‘voice in our heads’, the inner critic who judges and interprets reality, and determines our mood. He explains that when we see people talking to themselves on the street, we assume they are mad – but that’s what’s going on in all of our heads all the time, we just don’t say it out loud.
We all have a voice that ‘comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes and so on,’ says Tolle.
Quite often the voice isn’t even focusing on what’s happening now, it’s rehashing some old situation or worrying about an imagined one in the future.
‘It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness as well as disease,’ writes Tolle. When I read that, I sat bolt upright in my bed.
This small German man was reporting from the inside of my head.
Tolle explains that this voice stops us from ever enjoying the only thing that’s real: the Now. Only by living in the Now can we find peace and joy.
Reading every page felt like a religious experience.
This was it! The book.
If I could figure out how to shut up the vicious voice in my head, then everything would be better. But how?
The first step is to be aware of what the voice in our head says. Tolle tells us not to judge the thoughts or get annoyed with yourself for having them, nor should you get carried away with them – just step back and observe them.
He says that the more we observe our thoughts – rather than get caught up in them – the more they will lose their power. They’ll still pop up occasionally but they won’t take hold like they used to. You’ll be able to dismiss them the way you would a dottering old uncle.
And so I did what I was told. I started to observe my thoughts; to listen to the records playing in my head. It made for grim listening.
First there was the ‘fat record’. This started from the second I opened my eyes and felt the weight of my chunky thighs as I swung them out of bed. That record went something like this: You’re disgusting. Why do you eat so much? You have no discipline, you ate too much yesterday. This would then lead to a mental inventory of all I had eaten yesterday and a vow not to eat carbs today.
Then as I went down for breakfast, I’d start the lazy record: Why didn’t you get up sooner? Why did you turn off your alarm? Why did you drink so much last night? You’ve got so much to do today, you didn’t get anything done yesterday. Why are you so shit? Then I’d go through in my head all my productive friends and how much more sorted they were than me . . .
Then, as I tried to do some work, this record would play: This is shit – why is your brain so foggy? Pull yourself together, drink more coffee, this is waffle. Why are you making such a mess out of an article about tights? For God’s sake, any moron could do this. Other writers could have done this in half the time, they’d have written three pieces by now and, look, you’re still halfway through this crap one . . .
Then as day turned to night and I’d try to drown out the voice with booze, I’d turn on the ‘I drink too much’ record: Why are you drinking? You said you wouldn’t drink today. You have no discipline, you’ll feel crap tomorrow . . .
And if I was with friends: People think you’re boring. Shut up, nobody is interested in you, just listen and be nice, people think you’re stupid and self-obsessed.
Or men: No guys ever fancy you, you have dodgy teeth and a fat arse, and you’re ginger. He thinks that you fancy him and he’s thinking, no way, etc., etc.
Then, of course, there was the ‘money record’, which could be put on at any point of the day and night – actually usually this one came on when I was trying to fall asleep: You’re a fucking idiot, you’ve messed everything up, you’re a disgusting spoilt human being. People your age have pensions and a house. What do you have? You don’t even have savings. You’ll never afford your own place . . .
So, there you go: the torturous soundtrack to my day. It was so normal to me I hadn’t even realized it was there.
This was the reason I got sick all the time. I was poisoning my body with my thoughts. I thought that I was using this tough line to spur myself on, but it had the opposite effect. My bullying voice took the joy out of everything and drained me of energy. It also paralysed me – I was too busy drowning in past mistakes and imagined future disasters to actually get on with the task at hand. I was too busy hating myself to appreciate the nice life that I had playing out around me. I was in a mental prison of my own making.
Tolle says that we don’t need to sit cross-legged on the floor in order to be in the Now. He says that taking time during the day to look out of the window for a minute or two is enough to bring us back to the moment. Going for a walk and looking at the sky, trees and birds also helps. As does becoming absorbed in the physical sensations of whatever you are doing – from washing the dishes to walking up stairs. As a general rule, he says, we cannot be in our bodies and in our heads at the same time. So, when your thoughts are racing, he advises that you feel the energy of your body. He suggests you close your eyes and feel the energy in your hands, your feet, your abdomen, your chest. It will calm you down instantly.
And this is what I did. I kept looking out of the window, taking deep breaths and feeling my extremities while writing an article about a new diet. The ice diet. Yup, you eat ice and it helps you lose weight. On account of the fact there’s no calories in ice. I could not make this stuff up.
After a week of breathing, talking to trees, feeling my feet, the volume of my negative thoughts had not really gone down. In fact, I discovered something interesting: I was quite attached to them.
I realized this while eating pasta at Helen’s. The flat was warm and cosy and the food delicious. It should have been an easy evening. But in my head I was really going to town with this cheerful self-talk: You shouldn’t be drinking, you’re a lazy waste of space. But don’t say that, Helen will think it’s stupid . . . and why are you eating more pasta? Your jeans are already hurting you. And you shouldn’t be eating carbs. Every meal you’ve eaten today is carbs.
I did the ‘be here now’ stuff – took deep breaths and felt my feet – but I kept playing the old records. The truth was that I was getting a perverse pleasure out of my ‘poor me’ doom-and-gloom narrative.
‘The mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-create what it knows and is familiar with. Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar,’ says Tolle. ‘Observe the peculiar pleasure you get from being unhappy.’
My God, he’s right. I did get a thrill out of being unhappy. But why?
Tolle says it’s down to our ‘ego’ – which he defines as the false identity we create for ourselves based on our thoughts and the stories we tell ourselves. We all think that someone with a big ego is someone who thinks they are better than other people, but actually it can be the other way around too.
‘Every ego wants to be special,’ Tolle once explained to Oprah. ‘If it can’t be special by being superior to others, it’s also quite happy with being especially miserable. Someone will say, “I have a headache,” and another says, “I’ve had a headache for weeks.” People actually compete to see who is more miserable! The ego doing that is just as big as the one that thinks it’s superior to someone else.’
He adds that many of us build our identities around our problems and so we are loath to give them up because it would feel like losing who we are.
Tony Robbins had said exactly the same thing – that our biggest addiction is to our problems. He also said that as much as we may think we don’t want problems, we do really because they are fulfilling a need in us. It was only now that I understood how true that was.
And so as I listened to a pretty girl singing a Coldplay song on The Voice, I had a minor epiphany.
I LOVED MY PROBLEMS. I MEAN, I REALLY REALLY LOVED MY PROBLEMS. EVEN THOUGH ACTUALLY, TECHNICALLY SPEAKING, I DIDN’T REALLY HAVE ANY PROBLEMS AT ALL, APART FROM THOSE MADE UP IN MY HEAD.
Tolle says that at any moment, if we are worrying, we should ask ourselves, ‘Is there a problem right now?’ and ninety-nine per cent of the time there isn’t.
But I kept inventing some. I would rather stay in my negative thoughts, no matter how unhappy they made me, because they were who I thought I was. They were the story I’d been telling myself for as long as I could remember.
Tolle says that stepping away from your ego (your stories) literally feels like death, so your ego (in the form of your crazy, manic thoughts) will do all it can to keep you in the same old loop. ‘Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry and hard-done-by person. You will then deny or sabotage the positive in your life,’ writes Tolle.
And, as if my negative thoughts weren’t bad enough, we all have an attachment to our negative feelings too. Enter the mysterious ‘pain body’ which, according to Tolle, is old pain that we carry around with us. From the day you wet your pants at school and felt ashamed, to the pain of your first heartbreak and that anger with your father . . . all that emotion, if not felt, expressed and let go of at the time, stays with you and informs how you respond to day-to-day life, even fifty years after the event.
We unconsciously look for situations that confirm that our ‘pain body’ is right. So, for example, insecure people will find constant affirmations that nobody likes them and will even seek relationships with people who are not interested in them, just to confirm the feelings of their pain body.
That was it. I was always looking for situations to find hard. Things to struggle with. I was always looking for people to reject me – even though, as I found out in Rejection Therapy month, most of the time it was me doing the rejecting.
‘You would rather be in pain,’ Tolle writes, ‘than take a leap into the unknown and risk losing the familiar unhappy self.’
Exactly! I always put myself back into the role of the poor fat ginger girl that nobody would ask to dance at school. Because then I could feel sorry for myself and play the victim, instead of getting out there, getting my hands dirty and taking the punches like everyone else.
While trawling his website for more Eckhart content – I could not get enough – I found an even pithier summary: ‘The pain body is this: an addiction to unhappiness.’
This was me! I was addicted to my unhappiness.
I loved being miserable! I got a kick out of being unhappy! Out of the poor-me stuff!
On the night bus home, I struggled to understand this new reality. All the stuff in my head was just total made-up nonsense. It wasn’t real at all.
I woke up still stunned by this realization. Who would I be if I lost all my stories about being fat and ugly, and bad with money, and always getting sick? Those stories were my identity. Would I still be me? Or would I be . . . well, nothing?
The idea of losing my problems didn’t feel good – it actually felt terrifying. Like taking a step off a cliff.
As I did my daily walk around the park, pondering these deep existential questions, it dawned on me that maybe this is why self-help books often don’t help in the long term. We think we want to change but we don’t really. We keep going back to our old ways, our old selves, our old stories because it’s too scary not to.
Because to really change means to lose ourselves completely.
This is where my head started to spin out. At the end of the third week of January, I found myself wandering through Hyde Park, trying to make sense of something that made no sense to me.
If we are not our thoughts and not our feelings – what exactly are we?
According to Tolle, our ego wants us to feel separate from the people around us, while the truth is that we are all part of the same consciousness, the same life force. We are One with the flowers and the trees, One with the animals and with each other – we are One with all of life. We are all the same mass of energy or consciousness that has just taken on different forms. He describes it as being like a wave thinking that it is separate from the sea. It’s not. It’s part of the ocean and it temporarily takes on its own form but will always go back to the ocean. This is what life and death are like for us, he says. Our bodies will come and go but our ‘Being’ will always be there and we are all part of the same ‘Being’.
He writes: ‘underneath the level of physical appearances and separate form, you are one with all that is.’
I read and re-read these sentences, trying to nail them down, but they were slippery. Was Being another word for God? Was that right? Was there a God? Was there a divine force? Is that what he was saying? I didn’t get it. And of course we are separate. I am me and you are you and . . . Oh, my head hurt . . .
I looked up to find that I’d walked through Hyde Park and up Edgware Road and was now on Baker Street. It was after work and the pavement was full of smartly dressed office workers dashing for the Tube.
I went into a Costa and ordered a hot chocolate. A woman next to me was picking at a blueberry muffin while a young couple were smiling and flirting with each other. They were on a sober date – an idea almost as baffling as consciousness.
I opened my laptop and found myself typing ‘Is there a God?’ into Google. For two hours I flicked through sites I did not understand on New Age stuff about Consciousness and Energy and Connection . . . I didn’t get it but I wanted to get it.
I had never thought about the big things before; I was always too busy obsessing over my petty neuroses to do that. I’d spent my life locked in this stupid tiny prison of my thoughts and I was missing the experience of being alive!
As I walked down the Marylebone Road, cars stuck in Friday night traffic, my head was spinning. Why were we all here? If we’re all connected – why aren’t we nicer to each other? Why can’t life be a kind of heaven?
I called Mum. She was a teacher, she knew things.
‘The Power of Now says that we are more than our thoughts and feelings – but if that’s true, then what exactly are we?’ I asked her. ‘I mean, are we just Energy? or Love? or Consciousness? Do you think there is a God? Not like a Catholic Mean God but a kind of higher power that connects us all?’
After a long pause, Mum’s response to the major philosophical question underpinning all our existence was succinct. ‘I don’t know, Marianne, but I have to go. Graham Norton is about to begin.’
Even though I didn’t fully understand what Tolle was saying, his words had done something to me. By the end of January, I felt a kind of calm that was entirely new to me.
At night, instead of lying awake for hours worrying about everything and nothing I would go through each part of my body, feeling the energy in my feet, my legs, my hips . . . and I’d usually fall asleep somewhere around my shoulders.
Days still started with a jog of anxiety but I’d talk myself around with the words ‘Be here now, be here now . . .’
I’d go downstairs and mindfully make my coffee and actually taste my toast instead of wolfing it down. Then I’d go for a quick march in the park nearby. My usual approach was to listen to some crappy Euro dance track while I squeezed my bum and walked as fast as I could up the hill, trying to kickstart some sort of motivation for the day. But on Friday 30th January I took a different approach.
As I did my morning walk around Hampstead Heath, my thoughts ran through to what I had to do that day: another article on hair frizz to finish and a piece on mindfulness to write for an Irish newspaper. Usually this would have sent me off in a tailspin of adrenalin, I’d walk faster and faster and berate myself for not waking up sooner. I would, ridiculously, have got stressed writing about how to de-stress with mindfulness.
That day, I did not feel overwhelmed by my to-do list.
Instead I felt peaceful. I tried something radical: I took out my earphones and walked in silence.
I slowed down my pace and listened to the gentle thump of my feet on the ground and the swooshing sound of my jacket sleeves rubbing against my side. I became aware of the cold air brushing against my cheeks. My senses were heightened by turning off the music.
I thought I could hear seagulls and I wondered if that was right – could I be hearing seagulls in London? There was a barking dog too and then the distant roar of an aeroplane.
I stopped still.
I looked at the bare brown trees dotted around the park. They were elegant, quiet and strong. I’d like to be those trees, I thought. I bet nothing bothers them.
I could feel my heart beating.
Two women marched past me in their Lycra. ‘He didn’t even send a text,’ said one. ‘That’s disgraceful,’ spat her friend. They marched on in indignation and low-level fury.
I thought about how silly we are, getting outraged over nothing.
A muddy blond Labrador ran past me with a stick in his mouth, panting with delight and shaking with excitement. Dogs are so happy, aren’t they? They don’t need anything but a field and a stick and they are bursting with joy. They don’t get offended or slighted or worried about their precious egos. They just know that right now their paws are slapping around in a muddy field and there’s a chewed-up tennis ball flying through the air and that’s the best thing ever!
Why can’t we be like that?
I came home feeling serene. I did all my work in five hours – with no drama at all.
At about 3pm, I stopped for a late lunch. The mid-afternoon light was coming through the windows and the quiet of the house had a gentle hum to it. There was a slight vibration from the tumble dryer finishing its cycle upstairs. I could almost sense the electricity and water pipes doing their thing.
I took a breath.
I looked at how pretty the food was on my plate and put a piece of broccoli in my mouth. It burst with life on my tongue. How had I not noticed how bursty-with-life broccoli was before? I mean, I’d always liked broccoli but this tasted like magic broccoli.
I looked out of the window again. There was a squirrel sitting on the grass in the garden. I thought of how they drive Rachel mad – always digging up things and chewing – but it looked almost regal sitting there with its luxurious tail. How could you be angry at that?
I took another breath.
I looked at the wood of the table and stared at the caramel grain. I looked at the deep orange tulips standing to attention in a vase. They looked so alive to me – like little people right there on the table. In that moment, I could see the aliveness of everything. The magic of everything.
Why on earth had I been making it so hard? All I needed was here. I felt a warm rush of love flood my body, a feeling so strong it was almost painful. It was so overwhelming that tears pricked my eyes.
I thought about my mum and felt such a love for her I could have burst. I thought of my sisters and friends . . . I thought about people I hadn’t thought of for years, even people who had hurt me or annoyed me; I could see that they had all had their purpose. I thought of the people whom I had hurt and I hoped they felt the same way about me.
It suddenly seemed almost overwhelmingly perfect that we had blood coursing around our veins and a heart that beats and a sky that went all pink and purple and gold in the evening. We had people who loved us and plants and life and death and light that shone through windows.
I could hear the kids chatting next door and the sound of a plane in the sky . . . It might be going to New York where my sister lived . . . I was related to someone who lived in New York! How cool was that? People knew people everywhere and they got on planes to see them, travelling through the sky . . .
The pipes were making a throbbing sound and I felt sleepy and warm and ready for a nap. I walked into the living room and sat on the sofa and put a tartan rug on my lap. The sofa was squishy. I closed my eyes and felt myself going under . . . ah, snoozes, one of the best things in the world. And there are so many best things . . . coffee, smiles, hugs . . .
I woke up in darkness. The house was still empty. The bliss was still there, in my body, in my head, in the room . . . then for a second my thoughts kicked off again: Why did you fall asleep? You have stuff to do . . . You’re so lazy. Rachel doesn’t sleep in the day . . . But this time I laughed at how predictable all this was.
This is just your brain doing what it does, I told myself. This is just a record.
Then it stopped. And then I felt a bit lost.
Letting go of that voice felt strange – and scary.
It was 7.20. Rachel wasn’t home yet. I sat in silence. Now what?
If living in the moment is the answer to happiness – did that mean that was me sorted, then? I didn’t need any self-help or self-improvement?
Should I just go and find a park bench and settle in? Not worry about my debts, and let go of my ambitions and dreams?
Which brought me back to this whole project: Why was I doing it? What was I striving for?
Eckhart Tolle would say that I had everything I needed right then. I was alive, I was breathing. I was safe. And yet I still wanted more.
Was that wrong? Did that mean I was not in the Now?
Because even though part of me wanted a nice future, every time I thought about my aims and goals, they stressed me out. The wanting stressed me out. I would start to panic and tell myself to try harder, do more, make things happen. Wanting is the opposite of being in the Now.
Tolle describes stress as ‘being “here” but wanting to be “there”’. He says that it’s natural for all of us to plan things for the future but that we must never prioritize the future over today. You can set goals and work towards them but you must give the most attention to the step you are taking now, not the end destination.
If you don’t do that, ‘your life is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it”. You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside, nor are you aware of the beauty or the miracle of life that unfolds around you.’
My life had been a never-ending attempt to ‘make it’ and ‘arrive’. I’d thought I’d be OK when I got more successful, when I was slimmer, or when I got money. I’d thought I’d feel better if I had a boyfriend – or became more improved.
But none of it had worked because happiness lies not in striving but in sinking into each moment and taking it all in. Enjoying the work, not the result. Enjoying the sound of Rachel laughing. Enjoying the taste of hot buttered toast. The feeling of falling into a thick velvet sleep on the sofa on a Friday afternoon.
Being in the Now doesn’t mean that you drop out and do nothing. You can take as much action as you like, as long as you do it with your feet firmly grounded in the Now. Tolle argues that actually our best work and inspiration come from a place of calm and peace, not striving and stressing. I thought of Italy and how easily I had grabbed the Werther’s Original when I stopped trying. It was the same idea.
But few of us live life like this. We’re all too busy running after the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. It’s how society tells us we should be. It’s insane.
‘Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species,’ says Tolle. ‘That’s not a judgement, it’s a fact.’ He suggests picking up a history book and studying what’s happened in the last century. World wars, genocides, destruction of forests and wildlife – this is not the behaviour of a healthy society, he argues. We are literally killing each other and destroying the planet we rely on for life. We are also killing ourselves.
Tolle was suicidal when he had his epiphany. He believes that it’s only when we hit rock bottom that we realize there has to be a different way to live life.
Which was what the last few months had done for me.
I thought of Gemma’s elastic band and how close I had come to snapping. It was no longer an option to keep living the way I had been: always beating myself up, pushing myself and punishing myself.
As Tolle writes: ‘When you are trapped in a nightmare, you will probably be more strongly motivated to awaken than someone who is just caught in the ups and downs of an ordinary dream.’
I had woken up.
By the end of January, having spent a month washing dishes, gazing at trees, feeling my feet, there was nowhere else I’d rather be, nobody else I’d rather be.
On Saturday 31 January I was having coffee in Bread and Bean. That Depeche Mode song came on the radio . . . ‘All I ever wanted,/All I ever needed/Is here in my arms’ and I sang along quietly while looking out of the window. Snow was falling like a secret being whispered. The world looked soft. An overweight bald man wearing hot-pink trainers walked down the street. I had a warm feeling inside. A feeling of calm and joy so profound that, yet again, tears pricked my eyes and I saw that life was good, I was fine. These moments are precious but if we pay attention we realize they’re happening all the time.