Inside Yoga 117 (29/9/14)
“I’ve always wanted to be happy,” said Neil Baldwin to Lou Macari, in the BBC drama shown last week, “So I decided to be,” explained Neil.
This conversation is just one part of a true story, shown last week, about Neil Baldwin, now in his 60s, a man with learning difficulties who did what he said he would do – this included being kit man for Stoke City (while Lou Macari was in charge in the early 1990s), setting up his own football team (apparently with the help of Gary Lineker), visiting Tiny Benn in Westminster, and he became Keele University’s “mascot” after decades helping and talking with students in an unofficial role that he chose himself.
His life story is filled with reminders on how it is possible to seek what we want and to live a happy contented life.
“Neil’s complete lack of self-consciousness has made him many genuine friendships with the famous,” says Malcolm Clarke, a close friend. “People say he’s a fantasist, but he isn’t – he turns his fantasies into reality.”
People are always willing to help him, because, says Clarke “there’s not an ounce of malice in him.”
The dialogue above, “I’ve always wanted to be happy. So I decided to be,” is such a poignant line. Easier to say than do, many will say, yet this short sentence hits the nail perfectly on its head. There are a lot of marvellous moments in the film, yet this one line stood out for me.
We fail to find happiness because we do not want it – we have not made the decision to be happy! It has to be this, because if we decided to be happy we will be? I realise life throws at us so many challenges, some very stressful, others are tragedies filled with grief, yet they are all changed by our decisions to pick ourselves up and move on, to be happy, or perhaps better described as happier than we were before.
People who face a terminal illness are sometimes appear happy to others, as they now live life day to day, to fill it as best they can. This is why the Buddha taught so much about living in the present moment, about being here and now: living each day as if it is your last day, appreciating every moment. It is a very powerful technique and worth exploring if you haven’t already. It teaches us to notice our day and appreciate what we have, and not worry about what might be and what could be.
So Neil is right, it is that simple, we can be happy if we decide to be. But why do we make it so complicated? Perhaps because we like to make it complicated and harder; life can feel complex and we have an urge to fill it with as much as we can and make it crammed and cluttered, so no wonder it can feel very complex and hard?
Our history is littered with wisdom from those who have explored this, for example, the Buddha and Christ mentioned simplicity as being the answer to our strife.
This is why meditation is so important because its practice is about stripping away all those layers that complicate and confuse our life, and affect our perception. Once it’s stripped back we can see how simple it all really is, that our feelings, perceptions and aspirations come from within us and are reactions to the world around us. Take away the influence of the outside world, while in meditation, and we can see that all we need to do is to decide to be happy!
“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions,” said the Dalia Lama; and Aristotle said “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
As the Buddha explained: “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”
I know it sounds so simple, but as Neil said, it is our decision!
The BBC film is called “Marvellous” – it is on iPlayer till Thursday evening.
There are articles about Neil Baldwin, see http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/mar/09/neil-baldwin-keele-university
And a campaign to get a Knighthood for Neil, see http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/neil-baldwin-knighthood-campaign-gathers-4345922
If you have any comments about this blog, see panel below
