Just before Christmas I was standing in the lobby of a Belfast hotel while two guests were asking the receptionist if they could order a meal. The hotel was packed, the bars were buzzing and even in the foyer young people were spilling drinks and fondling each other.
“You might find someone to make you a sandwich,” the receptionist said, “but you’ll have to swim through the bar to get to the dining room.”
As the two guests dived into the steamy bar, where young people were squashed like sardines, to find their sandwiches, I decided to venture outside through the swing doors to find a takeaway.
Just down the street I found a Chinese restaurant with an attractive neon sign, and white tablecloths on each table, where people with party hats were celebrating someone’s birthday.
What I wasn’t expecting in the restaurant was for another human being to touch me. It happened as I was leaving.
I had ordered wonton soup and chilli chicken, and, as I was sitting on the couch just off the dining area, I felt very alone as the young people all around me sucked barbecue ribs and drifted lazily into an erotic haze. I was waiting so long that the middle-aged manager came over to me and said: “The wontons are being made fresh so it will take another few minutes.”
Like an old friend
When the food arrived I paid cash, and, as I stood up to leave he shook my hand. Then he linked my arm, like an old friend, and escorted me to the door, and patted me on the back, saying: “I am really sorry you were delayed, but I hope you have a pleasant evening. Enjoy your meal. Thank you. Goodbye.”
This personal attention was very comforting. I felt he understood me. I felt dignified. He saw me buying food to bring back to my hotel room and he saw in my slumped body the shadow of sorrow as I sat there alone. So he reached out and did just a tiny bit more than would have been required of him. He touched me physically and spoke personally. He cared for me as a human. If we were in prison and I was cold, he might offer me his blanket, I thought. That’s the kind of man I imagined him to be.
I was so moved by the tiny gesture of kindness, the simple acknowledgement of my humanity, that when I saw a woman begging as she sat on the ground outside a nightclub, stretching her plastic cup towards me, I put three pound coins in it instantly, and she gave me a thumbs up as if she were an adjudicator and I had passed some test. As they say in Cavan, “one thing leads to another”. Certainly one kindness begets another. And all kindness is begotten in wisdom. Or as they say in Tibet, “emptiness is the mother of compassion”.
My Tibetan teacher
I used to think that emptiness was what remained in the bottle after I had drunk the whiskey, but my Tibetan teacher taught me otherwise.
It was he who explained to me that my sense of self is a delusion. There is nothing in me and no part of me that can exist without dependence on other beings in particular, or on the rest of the universe in general. The ultimate reality is that we are all connected. This is a very wise idea. It doesn’t mean I don’t exist. But the “I” that I am has no independent or autonomous core. Which means any self-obsession is a complete waste of time, as most comedians know well.
Not that I go around the world being compassionate to strangers. I frequently get as self-obsessed as any other writer, but at least I have a map out of the forest.
They say that if a badger grips your leg in his jaws, he will never let you go until he hears the bones snap. But as they mooch about the lawn at night, their presence reminds me that I am not alone.
And when the magpies eat the holly berries and then evacuate the seeds under the spruce tree so that the ground beneath is full of tiny sprigs of new holly, I am reminded of the way the entire universe is connected.
I suppose that’s the wisdom that gives me enthusiasm sometimes to walk into a restaurant or a radio studio, or to sit down to write at the computer, knowing that ultimately we are all woven deeply into the one single being.