Read the manual!

Whenever we want to learn to operate a piece of electronic equipment or appliance, we usually read the manual so that we can get the item to work properly for us.

I think the hardest thing to "operate" is interpersonal relationships, whether its relationship between parent and child, co-workers or two people in a love relationship.

It seems amazing to me that many people in relationships try to do this blindly without adequate emotional literacy and we avoid reading the thousands of great books which actually are the manuals to properly work a relationship.

There are great books like "Getting The Love You Want" by Harville Hendrix and more recently "The New Couple" by my dear friends Seana McGee and Maurice Taylor.

Couples often wonder why they get entangled in a gordion knot of power struggle, with the accompanying problems of a lack of communication, blaming, inability to resolve conflict and many other problems until the machinery of their relationship breaks down. Then they try to fix it, again with no understanding of the mechanics of relationship.

I think that reading self help books are like reading the manual and are imperative in gaining literacy in human relationships. Couples should read these manuals long before the relationship hits any bad patches.

Until about 15 years ago, I used to think that these books were for the weak, but not any more.

Although there will always be difficulties and challenges in relationships, having emotional literacy means that we will be able to find a way to get out of trouble more quickly.

One tip, when reading these books, don't underline all the examples of bad behavior or characteristics in your partner.

Instead, underline the bad points which describe your own self. By doing this, each partner shines the light of awareness on oneself.

If both partners do this, recovery will happen and the chances of returning the relationship to equilibrium and continued positive growth will be much greater.

The line dividing good and evil

The great Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who passed away this past August 3rd wrote in his book The Gulag Archipelago (1973),

"It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.

This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil."

I first heard these words paraphrased when attending a talk by author and teacher Wayne Dyer in the late 90s. I often contemplate on these words when I come across people who come across as being downright evil.

These people have the ability to arouse one's own propensity for evil, whether that manifests in thoughts of jealousy, envy, judgmental-ism etc., and the acts of gossip or sabotage which come from such negative thoughts.

Sometimes I meet people who come across as being good, but an evil sliver of their personality comes through...like when they (or even I for that matter) says something unkind to a service staff member. Later I regret such behavior, but thinking about such behavior reminds me that the propensity for evil still lurks.

When we look at public figures, whether they are politicians or celebrities from the world of art or sport, we often see how on they can be really nice at one moment and complete idiots on another occasion.

Solzhenitsyn writes that the line shifts. That's why when we look back at a different part of our lives, our past personalities and way we might have behaved makes us think that we are thinking about a whole different person.

So I do believe that a leopard CAN change their spots.

Bad people can become good and good people can turn bad.

We should look at people at how they are now and not pre-judge how they will behave towards us, especially if we have not seen them for a long time.

I sometimes share with friends an example of how I used to be quite arrogant in my 20s. I will share that in another posting. Nowadays, I like to think that I am no longer so arrogant, that my line within has shifted in a positive way.

It would be so easy if we could draw a line and say that the evil people are on one side and the good people are on the other side.

However as Solzhenitsyn says, this line exists within the human heart of each and everyone of us.

One way of looking at Freedom....

When I travel the world to play my gigs, people in the West sometimes say to me, "Singapore is a successful and nice country but there is no freedom there."

What I say to them is, "I don't know what you consider freedom to be, but to me, freedom is the ability to walk on any street and almost every back alley in Singapore at any time of the day or night and not get bugged."

I prefer that kind of freedom to the freedom of being able to say anything you like, whether its fair comment or not, without consequences, and then feel unsafe to walk around many places in your home city....not to mention the strong smell of urea wafting onto the main street of some of the biggest capital cities.

Of course I think we can continue to grow and expand in various areas like freedom of expression, but not at the expense of the high level of personal safety for each person, which we have in Singapore.

Living Our Lives Backwards

I love this quote by Margaret Young;

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what want so that they will be happier.

The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you really want."

I have in the past and sometimes still make this mistake of living my life backwards. However, I find that when I do as prescribed by Margaret Young, things do happen as I desire.

One area which I think many of us have this attitude is in the area of charity. We lament about how there is so much poverty in the world...and then sometimes say to ourselves, "when I win the lottery or when I am rich, I will give a big amount of money to charity".

I think that if one of our desires is to see poverty eradicated from the world, what we need to do is to give a little along the way and not wait for the "big one". I have seen people who were not rich before and then when they become very rich, they still don't help charities.

A few dollars here, a few dollars there and the culmination of all these small efforts by many people will result in the change we wish to see.

I have a page on my website with links to some of the most credible charity sites in the world where you can start the habit of giving a little on a regular basis right until we actually become rich. I think that lending a helping hand allows us to feel "rich" along the way to becoming rich.

Please click here to check out this page of charity links.

Blessings,
Jeremy

The more spiritual I become....

I have found....more and more over the years,

As I become more more spiritual, I become less religious.

Three different kinds of piano tuners

I often have to engage piano tuners to tune the piano in my home and studio and also for my gigs.

There are three kinds of piano tuners.

One, is able to fool most home piano owners, but not professional pianists like me. They service the domestic market and so they make decent money doing a mediocre job tuning many pianos and just do the minimum for the customer, if not less.

Two, there is the piano tuner who tunes the piano well...meaning that the piano is in tune. Technically speaking...even if you check with a tuning oscilloscope, they tune the piano "perfectly". I sometimes use these tuners.

Three, there is the piano tuner who not only gets the piano in tune but also get the piano to "sing" and make the harmonics and the fundamentals dance to create a 3-dimensional sound which allows the pianist, if he plays well, to stimulate not only the ears, but also his heart & soul and that of the listener.

These three types of piano tuner are metaphors for the three types of workers we are, or workers who work for us. Any type of worker, even musicians.

We need to ask ourselves, in our own chosen profession, are we like piano tuner no. 1, 2 or 3? I think that we need to approach our work like piano tuner no. 3.

We will probably make more money because people who love quality often don't mind paying more for it; but even if we make less money during the rough times, we will still be happy about doing our work because we love it and are passionate about it.

I really don't know

Redd Holt, the great drummer and dear friend & colleague in our band Monteiro, Young & Holt once said to me..."If you don't know, and don't know that you don't know, then you really don't know."

Its nice to be in a place in my life where I am comfortable whether I know about something or not know. I prefer to know, but I am ok with not knowing.

For example, I believe that God exists, but I don't KNOW for sure (sensory perceptions don't prove to me that God exists, but my life experience so far and my intuition says that there is the existence of a Higher Power some people call God)...and I am ok with not knowing because I am going to be the way I am and behave the way I behave whether there actually is a God or not. That's a really nice place to be, because I can therefore live my life with little fear.

People in Singapore sometimes say in Singlish "Don't know, say Don't know lah!". I have a problem with people who don't know but refuse to admit that they don't know and try to give you some jive answer.

Here's a little video of Redd Holt, O'Donel Levy, the late Eldee Young and late John Stubblefield whom I played with on the main stage of the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1988.