It's on my bedroom wall. A piece of cream linen, hanging like a scroll between two short pieces of wood. Just 92 black words, printed in a deceptively ordinary font, a simple design for life.
The brother brought it back from India with him, along with enough bags of spices to open quite a decent take-away. He was going to use them to cook all these exotic meals for his new housemates. Things didn't work out. Things went from close to cool between us. He's staying somewhere different now.
"A Precious Human Life." That's what it says on the top of the scroll. And like all my brothers and sisters, he is precious to me. He doesn't think that now, though. I began to distance myself from him in an effort to avoid the confrontation I knew would come. But it happened anyway, the emotional distance making the meeting crueller than it might have been. I said too much. Didn't hold back. Put it all out there on the table, just the way he says he likes it. But he didn't like it this time. She hates me, he told my mother. She really hates me. How to find a way back?
"Every day think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to have woken up," the scroll says. Sometimes I feel it. A box-fresh morning. The sun shining in where we haven't put up curtains yet, a snippet of good news on the radio and my dream job waiting at the end of a short cycle ride. It's not hard to feel fortunate when the off-side rule is being explained patiently to you over a lazy Sunday salad. When you are moving little feta cheese defenders around a cucumber goal. On these days, anything is possible. Other days are harder. Brooding over an argument. Disturbed about things said and unsaid. Feeling, as though it were my own, his heart breaking slightly from the hurt. But even then I know I am fortunate to have woken up. It's just on these days it's harder to remember.
"I am alive, I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it." What's wasteful, though? What's more wrong? The hours spent watching live streams from the Big Brother house, glued to that precious human zoo, or the guilt that sets in afterwards? The guilt is more wasteful, I've decided, because at least what's going on in that house is real. Muscle man Jason's boredom and isolation. Michelle's all-consuming crush. Stuart's cowboy obsession. I'm not going to waste my life feeling guilty about my own big brother, either. Not if there is something more positive I can do. Maybe this is it.
"I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings." This is different for everybody. I know what this means for me. I need to develop my creative side. Nurture it. Give it space. I need to stop splashing around in the shallow end where there are no risks to be taken and, where, if I stumble, nobody will laugh at me for not being able to swim. I know diving into the deep end will help me expand my heart out to others. I don't know much about enlightenment, I don't think we can know until we achieve it. But we can nurture that which opens our hearts. I need to let my imagination run wild.
"I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry, or think badly about others." Yeah, right. These words have a deeply aspirational feel. But even reading them once or twice a day, forcing myself to spend a few seconds taking them in, tends to melt something in me. I have not been kind. I have been angry. I have thought badly about him. I may well do it again tomorrow. But reading the words aloud, saying with conviction, I am going to be kind, I am not going to be nasty, reminds me of my intention. It seems unbelievable, unthinkable that I would forget that this is how I want to behave. Somehow I do, though. Every day. I read it to myself morning and night and at least for those brief moments in time, I remember.
"I am going to benefit others as much as I can." This line concludes the advice from His Holiness The XIV Dalai Lama hanging on my bedroom wall. I met him in Belfast four years ago. I'd appreciate meeting the man in orange robes more now, I think.
"I am going to benefit others as much as I can." All I can say is that I will try. I don't think this means asking my brother back to stay with me. I don't even think it means taking back what I said. But I don't hate him. That knowledge may be of some small benefit. I hope with all my heart it is.