I rose at 7:30am today, slipped into my cleanest dungarees and headed to
The meeting was arranged for 9:00am, and as luck would have it, I arrived on the dot. After first calling at the wrong factory and confusing everyone by not knowing Seu Francisco’s surname, eventually I was let into a small courtyard and greeted by a large, friendly woman. “I don’t think Seu Francisco is coming in today,” she reported, “it appears he left on a trip yesterday.” A few weeks ago this would have provided the perfect opportunity for some tight-chested frothing, and I would have silently railed against the universe on my truculent journey home. But that was before Lama Zopa Rinpoche shared some pearls of wisdom with me through his marvelous manual, Transforming Problems into Happiness, which I fell asleep reading last night.
Taking away the religious aspects of his message, Zopa tells us that all our problems are the result of our negative past actions (karma). Instead of feeling angry when bad things happen to us, we should simply accept these difficult circumstances as the logical fruit of our past errors. This makes huge psychological sense to me. Even if the karma business isn’t true, it’s still a great way to live – not getting brought down by the inevitable setbacks in life, but accepting them with grace and getting on with it anyway. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm”. And he should know, having been responsible for several dramatic failures during the First World War, including the disastrous Gallipoli landings. If that really is what success is, then I’m well on my way.
So even when I got lost in São Paulo on my way home, ending up crossing the entire city in a state of utter bafflement until by chance finding another motorway that eventually led me home, I was able to remain calm and relaxed, and even almost enjoy a Dire Straits song on the radio during the journey. Whether the latter is a positive development or a step backwards is, perhaps, debatable.
Even when Seu Francisco called me at 10:30am to ask me where I was, as he’d just arrived in the office, my teeth remained unclenched at his worker’s incompetence and I was able to smoothly rearrange another meeting for next Tuesday at 10:30am.
Long may this new serenity last.
Comments
This lama chap is clearly onto something. I shall share his views with Mrs Boyo later. It can be nothing but karma, as I've been updating the bbc.news profile of Tibet today (for publication tomorrow, with added history and lamas).
I'd try to do something about the Dire Straits, though. Love, Actually was bad enough, actually, but Knopfler?
Take your mind to a higher place with this clip of Sophie Raworth in the changing room, my son:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGyzfFuXrEw
Boyo, I thank you kindly for the video link. She's looking even slimmer/shaplier than I remember. I agree she should use more colour.
Well, I found the street and the building, but I was buggered if I could find the part of it where prospective punter claimed to be working from. I walked round the perimeter of the place a couple of times, and wondered if he was operating from a kiosk out the back, or some sort of annexe - but no joy.
I had just started getting anxious, as the building was behind what appeared to be some police building, and I was attracting unwanted looks from the local militia-men, when he rang. I told him I was at the right place, but where the f*ck was his office?
He gave me directions again, and I carelessly asked if his building was to the left or the right of the police station? This caused some bewilderment, and an embarassing breakdown in communication occured. I guessed that he hadn't understood, and assured him that I would be there in a minute or two.
Then I realised my idiotic mistake. I had the right street, and the right number - just the wrong city! Or rather, he was in the outskirts, and I was in the centre of town. It was a bit like confusing Oxford Road, Manchester with Oxford Road, Stockport.
So I did what every intrepid explorer does in such situations - I found a cheap cafe and sat down to cup of steaming hot tea. Even the unfriendly scowls of the cafe-owner, a large dark-haired woman of at least 50 years and a 50-a-day habit who could spot a lunatic foreigner at 100 paces, could not put me off my enjoyment.
It was one of those moments of eastern revelation - admitting your own stupidity. And blaming the other foreigner for his stupidity too.