When a Meth Addict Rang My Doorbell, and Gave Me Enlightenment.
What I realized then has applied to every single relationship I have.
I was living in a shared house in London a while back, and really into meditation. One day, during one of my deep meditative states, I hear the doorbell. I didn’t know if anyone else was at home — there were five of us living in a large, Victorian-era house, so I got up and went to the door, thinking it might be a package delivery. Instead, I open the door, and there stands a man in his 20s or 30s, with his teeth (or what was left of them) decayed, dark and splintered. They reminded me of the crest of some majestic shoreline, the kind that rises straight out of the water, like that Friedrich painting.
He asks if Val is home, one of my housemates, and my first thought was that the guy sitting in front of me was a meth addict. Although a clean guy, my ex-housemate liked to indulge in the odd assortment of substances, and I had seen what meth does to people’s teeth (a.k.a. meth mouth) back when I was living in the USA, so I put two and two together. As this was going through my head, I noticed that the man was attempting to show himself into the house, and immediately, without giving a second thought, I shut him down: I placed myself in front of the door before he had a chance to head in, and told him that I didn’t know if Val was at home or where he was at all — but that he could try to reach him on his phone.
I must have had the ‘I know you’re an addict so I’m not letting you in’ face, because I could see shame in the way he looked back at me. Immediately, his body language changed to a defeated posture, head down, and he said ‘OK’ with his eyes in his phone. He gave up on the idea of coming in. I sat with the door open in front of him for a few more seconds as he was writing on his phone, and when I began to think that Val may not want to answer at all, I told the guy that if he reached Val, he could let me know, but that I needed to go back in. The man blurted a series of ‘yeah’s without lifting his head, as if wanting to say ‘I understand how you see me, it’s cool.’
I shut the door and then went back in my room, sat down in my meditation pose, and because of the receptive state that I was in, I began to notice the series of thoughts that were going through my mind about what happened. First, I thought to myself ‘You handled the situation well. Who knows who the guy was, what he would’ve done if I had given him the chance to let him in. Since he’s an addict, stealing was probably not beyond him. Yeah, he might’ve stolen something from Val’s room, had I given him the chance to go there.’ And in my meditative state, I could feel my slight contempt, my low-key fear of the possible antisocial actions his addiction would compel him to do, my judgemental train of thought. And right then and there, I could see how my thoughts shoehorned him into an addict. I didn’t know anything about the man, and yet here I was, judging him based on one factor: His teeth. It reflected into my behaviour with him — I wouldn’t have let any stranger in the house, but I would have acted differently to a stranger that I would’ve judged differently — and he had sensed it. Different how exactly, I don’t know. Anyway, that’s not the point. My actions with him, they were in the past. But why do I have to think about him that way in the present — why do my thoughts of him have to be so negative, reflecting so much disbelief in him as a human being?
As a psychology and neuroscience graduate, one of the most surprising fields of peer-review research that I’ve ever come across has been the field of faith healing. I had stumbled upon it after talking about prayer with my spiritually-minded girlfriend. I wanted to prove to her that prayer does not have an effect, and was expecting the academic literature to reflect that. Instead, lo and behold, I was wrong: The literature shows that having someone pray for you elicits a small but significant positive effect on outcome. This for me was incredible — it was an indication that the way you thought of someone could actually influence their life.
And here I was, thinking about this person in a negative way — that he is an addict, that he might’ve stolen had he come in the house, that it was good of me to shut him down. What good would that do him? And then, I realised what I needed to do: I began to think “I wish him love. I wish him happiness. I wish that he gets out of this rut, that he manages to solve whatever brought him to this point. I wish him serenity. I wish that he has a good life…” I went on and on, sitting in my meditation pose. I imagined him happy, surrounded by people he loves, grown from his experiences. And as I was thinking about him in this way, it felt right — it felt like this is it, this is how I need to think about people when I tend to judge them in any way. I didn’t know if this would actually help him or not. As the academic literature reveals, the jury is still out.But thinking about him in a negative way sure as hell won’t help him.
Then I began to think about other people that I had recently thought of in a judgemental way, whether I was aware of it at the time or not. And I began to do the same for each one, to think “I wish them happiness. I wish them love and the time to enjoy it. I wish them to achieve whatever they want in life as long as it benefits others. I wish them joy…” all the while imagining them smiling, happy — and it was liberating. It allowed me to realise how much time I waste on ruminations, even though I don’t consider myself to be a particularly judgemental person. And I resolved to apply this method any time I felt a tinge of judgement about anyone foaming up at the surface.
So far, so good. That is whenever I catch myself having negative thoughts about a person, I switch to thinking about them in the ways that I described, and I can feel the benefits in all sorts of ways. And I can’t help but wonder — if the way we think about a person does have some effect on their lives, even the slightest, what would happen if, instead of judging people, we would all spend the same amount of time to send these sorts of loving thoughts out to others? Then it wouldn’t be just beneficial to the person thinking them, like I’ve found them to be, but to everyone, to society at large.
So to the person I saw in front of that door, thank you friend, you have taught me a valuable lesson. I don’t know you, but I do hope that my thoughts of your happiness have had even the smallest effect. At the very least, I thought them many times since our encounter.
