Outline
- Quiet is being done with things, for now.
- Sometimes, in our lives, there is just no more time to wait to be happier.
Introduction
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico discusses alternatives to the search for happiness. The search for happiness is a form of denial, or non-consent, that happiness is available now.
Quiet is being done with things, for now. You can be quiet in the midst of a riot. In particular, you can be quiet in your search for happiness, even if you may believe you have not found it. Paradoxically, this will let you be more aware of your prior happiness.
Sometimes, in our lives, there is just no more time to wait to be happier. Bruce Di Marsico illustrates this with the story of the Russian saints, Boris and Gleb.
On Quiet
We have the opportunity to be quiet together. And by “quiet” we don’t mean silence. Quiet, inside. It doesn’t mean to whisper. Quiet doesn’t mean to not rattle. It doesn’t mean rattling or not rattling, it has nothing to do with any of those things.
Quiet is letting yourself be done with things for a little while, just be done with things for a little while. Everything could all suspended just for a couple of minutes and you could allow yourselves to indulge in the opportunities that will be there in quiet that are not there other times. We don’t have to play games to say that quiet is better than not quiet or that one is better than the other. One has opportunities that the other doesn’t have and that in being quiet there are opportunities that there aren’t there in not being quiet. Not better or worse opportunities, different ones.
It is possible, certainly, for any of us to be quiet in some way in the midst of a riot, we can have that in ourselves, we don’t really need the environment to be perfectly conducive to such a thing.
Don’t deny your specialness. That’s not modest. You have within you the seeds for a very beautiful garden and you can let yourself know that. You could spread them fearlessly. These seeds that are within you will never grow a bitter plant but only seeds through us. Some seeds will not seem to grow others will seem to need extra care and others will disappear to grow where you may never see the fruit. For wherever they take root and for however short they seem to grow you can know that there was at least that chance for something that there never was a chance well for before that. You are the nucleus of a future that depends on you. The best way to spread happiness is to live it. And be conscious of the fact that you are living it. Be happy and be at peace with all around you. Change what you want, do what you wish, but in all things be happy, live it and let this place here be a place that you will live it.
Live it with each other and be patient if you are not yet sharing all you can. You are not yet as happy as you will be. As you grow in happiness so will your thoughts and actions reach others who are waiting. If you grow in happiness, they’ll ask you to help them. Many will come to you from what seems like nowhere and you and they will be ready at that time, to go on being happier. Help one another to be happy each of you. Help each other to be happy. Unless you help one another here, now, how we help others? You can’t always say tomorrow, tomorrow, after I learn more, after I experience more, in time. Some day if you were to be happier you will say I will, now, I will, now.
Love each other right now, love each other more. You don’t believe in the world’s cop out that say “time will help me to love more. Time will help me to love more.” You may not have a lot in common from your pasts, but you have the most in common that any people ever will have. Are there any reasons why you really must be aloof from each other?
Are you going to really carry out the world’s myth that we are not yet friends? Some of you may even believe, and some of you do believe right now, that there is no real advantage to loving some others of you. Do you really need such a delusion? Is there really no advantage to being happier with all people? Is there really no advantage to really being with anybody?
Stop all the pretending that you are significantly different from each other. You are denying yourself a great peace. Those of you who love the others most will be the happiest among you.
The Story of Boris and Gleb
Happiness in the face of trials and disasters seems so incomprehensible to people, seem so extraordinary, that it’s been the custom of the Catholic Church for the last 2000 years that pretty much whenever it has come to their attention that’s someone’s managed to be happy they declare them a saint. And I was thinking of three brothers that lived in ancient Russia, the names were Boris and Gleb. They had third, Svialopolk.
Their father was a czar, and when the czar died, as was the custom of the time, his domains would be split and the revenues were to be split along the surviving sons. The third brother decided that he didn’t want a split with Boris and Gleb, and that he wanted all of Russia for himself and all the income. And so he started out on a scheme to kill them, to assassinate them. He didn’t even try to justify it by saying, “I have to get them before they get me” because they were both very, very happy people, Boris and Gleb, and they weren’t going to be out to do that to him and he knew that. He just simply decided that he would take advantage of them since they were so happy, it would be pretty easy to take what’s there’s from them. So he got henchmen together and planned the scheme. Boris and Gleb both found out about it and they were going about their business and they decided to do what they could to stay alive but they wouldn’t resort to killing their brother.
And when the time came, the one was out for a walk in the woods and he was waylaid, captured, brought to his brother. Meanwhile the henchmen who had captured him delighted in torturing him and doing whatever they could to him. They brought Gelb to his brother to kill him, and Gleb did what he could to talk his brother out of it. He used different reasons he could think of, he appealed to every emotion he could imagine, and he couldn’t talk his brother out of it.
The other brother was pretty much in the same position except he was much more frightened and when they got him he was on a boat somewhere, and his brother faced him and he cried and it didn’t do any good and he threw himself into tantrums, it didn’t do him any good, he pleaded, he offered everything that he had, none of it did any good.
And what’s recorded about each of those brothers is after they did everything they could do, one used unhappiness and fear and the other didn’t, they both resigned themselves to it and said “well if you are going to kill me, you are going to kill me, but you are not going to make me a unhappy.” And each of them decided that they were going to love him. They loved him. They saw his fear, and he murdered them, each of them.
They henchman and the others who were around the time they were murdered were really struck by the happiness that Boris and Gleb allowed themselves in their last days and the last moments, so much so, that the words spread and the Russian people wanted them to be canonized saints. The Archbishop of the Metropolitan of Leningrad said they don’t fit into any category. They are not really martyrs of faith, they didn’t die for their faith, they are not confessors of the faith, they are not priests, they are not widows. And they canonized them anyway and they’re known today as the Saints Boris and Gleb.
Sometimes, in our lives, there is just no more time to wait to be happier.
Questions for Reflection
Do you feel you need to apply the Option Method quickly, thoroughly, and perfectly in order to be happy?
Experiment for a moment. Be done with trying to be happier, for now. How does it feel?
The Option Method is to help people not need help, by helping them realize that they don’t need help. How do you hope to be helped by the Option Method?
Meditation for the Week
Sometimes, in our lives, there is just no more time to wait to be happier.