Middle-Age Honger

My mom enters my apartment unannounced, without knocking. I ran into my room to put more clothes on, already irritated.
She needed to drop off something at my place and she happened to be downtown working. Her co-worker was carpooling with her so she wanted to check out my apartment.

The whole time while my mom were discussing what she was dropping off and her asking me what else she needed out of her grocery bag, the woman kept up her soliloquy in Cantonese:

"WAH! Apartment so small! (WAH GUM SAI, etc.) The bed doesn't even fit the bedroom! WAH! That is the fridge? So tiny, never seen any this tiny! That sink, you can only fit one pot. No counter space. How is this possible a place so small. How is this liveable? That's it to the place? Nothing else? WAH, I can never live here, how does one live here? I would never be able to live here"

This went on for approximately 5-10 minutes, all the while she's sucking her teeth and shaking her head "tse tse tse" I looked at this women a couple of times with my eyebrows raised but didn't say a word the entire time. My mom pretended I didn't understand cantonese and looked at me horrified and giving me a look like, "don't talk back."

Before she left, she says to me in canton-laden mandarin, "your pantry is very pretty."
I gave her a tight-lipped smile, did not say anything, and closed the door behind them.

I was polite enough, considering I have never met her before.

[CHINESE] 容

The way Chinese character works is that a single character on its own has a partial meaning and when combined with another character that has its own partial meaning, it creates a phrase that solidifies and strengthen the meaning, sometimes due to repetition of meaning, sometimes through extension of meaning.

For example, the Chinese word "róng" [容] generally means having room, in the context of having the room to accept or allow something to happen.

The character "bao" [包] generally means wrap/include/package. Together, they make the phrase "bao rong" [包容], which would transliterate to include room for acceptance, which would translate to "tolerance." Another phrase that can also be translated to "tolerant" is "qwan rong" [寬容], which comes from the character "qwan" [寬], which means wide, therefore, wide acceptance or lenience. Now if you put the character with the world "sho" [收], meaning collect, you get "sho rong" [收容], which means having the room to take in something. If you put the character with "ren" [忍], meaning endure, you get "rong ren" [容忍], or the room to endure

• Endure, or "Rong ren" [容忍], is generally used in the context of people and behaviour so that you have room to endure others behaviour.
• Take in, or "Sho rong"[收容], is generally used in the context of having room to adopt/house another person or pet of some sort (collecting, accepting another physical being).
• Lenient Tolerate, or "Qwan rong" [寬容], is generally used in the context of the law or social rules, meaning you are lenient towards someone who's done something bad, and that you are forgiving.
• Acceptance tolerate, or "Bao rong" [包容], is generally used in the context of relationships, meaning that you are accepting of others' flaw.

Without going into all the denotations and connotations of that character (there are definitely more), already we can see that the character "rong" [容] has a positive connotation.  To have the room/air/capacity means you are the bigger person and therefore educated, erudite, and classy.

Asian philosophy dictates that in a happy marriage, husbands and wives must "hu hsiang bao rong" [互相包容] - mutual mutual include acceptance, i.e., be tolerant of each another. A man must have the capacity to be receptive to the flaws of his wife and a woman must have the room to be open-minded about her husband's failings. Of course, from a general standpoint, tolerance is necessary for any relationship. A person who has the capacity to tolerate differences from others, to have an open-mind about the world is someone who can easily love and be loved. After all, no one is perfect. If you cannot tolerate another person because you think they are dumb, or boring, simply beneath you, then you are asking to be treated the same way by someone else who cannot tolerate your flaws.

Letting Go

The Buddha said we experience the peace of nirvana by letting things be as they are. Indeed, applying the Beatles' exhortation to "Let It Be" to our lives can bring a lot of serenity and equanimity. [...]

Of course, if it were that easy, we'd all be enlightened by now. 放開--Letting go, letting be, or embodying the Buddhist term "nonattachment" greatly reduces and even alleviates suffering. In fact, it is the goal of Buddhism. Buddha taught that the cause of suffering is craving and attachment. Therefore, letting go of our tight-fisted grasping is in our own self-interest, as it helps erode our wellspring of dissatisfaction and anxiety.

...attachment is like holding on tightly to something that is always slipping through my fingers--it just gives me rope burn. But letting go--nonattachment--relieves the constant, painful irritation. A good example of this is not being able to fall asleep at night because you keep turning something over and over in your mind. It's one of those times when letting go is obviously a necessary virtue, and having some kind of relaxation tool can be extraordinarily helpful.

Scientific research has shown that people who are optimistic and have an ability to accept or let go of negative memories, experiences, and events tend to be healthier and live longer than people who are pessimistic and worry about or try to change things that are out of their control. Indeed, acceptance is actually transformative, and awareness is curative. Sometimes mistaken for passivity or complacency, acceptance has a powerful magic that is actually quite dynamic and creative. Have you ever noticed, for example, how accepting your mate rather than trying to change him or her ends up improving your relationship?

The easiest way to work on letting go and letting be is to notice your tendency to want things to be different from what they are and to practice giving up that strong preference. The Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen sang, "The Way is not difficult for those who have few preferences."

Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/2000/12/Letting-Go-Letting-Be.aspx#ixzz1m2TuZSPJ

Eating Loss

I've always been the type that stresses for other people's lack of time management. When I watch people do things last minute, I cringe. I am the type of person that, when a project is due on a Monday, I will try to finish it on the Friday. If it's due on the Friday, it must at the very least be done by Thursday night. I cannot handle the stress of still working on something five minutes before it's due while fearing that it won't be done on time. (Yeah, I know, a load of fun to be with....)

When I'm in a relationship with someone, I have the habit of taking on their responsibility like it's my own. I hate having people work around my schedule, and i hate being the cause of anyone having to wait for me or cancel something because of me...and if I am a part of whatever time-management disaster that's happening, even if it is not my fault, i will stress. And the stress that adds to the existing stress is that i hate nagging. So if I see someone mis-managing their time, I'm stressed because they're mis-managing, and also because i feel a need to nag and i dont want to do it.

I think the most memorable incident that made me realize this was when I was in Seattle at the end of Adam's coop workterm. The plan was that his parents are going to drive to Seattle from Vancouver to pick us up. Adam was supposed to have packed all his things by the time his parents are here and we should be ready to drop off his rental car, get in the car, and leave.

For the entire week, before his parents arrival, I was nagging him to pack his stuff, offering to help him, provided that he tells me what he's going to keep, and what he's not. He was too busy. So the night before his parents came, we were scrambling to get him packed. The next day, his entire family waited for him all day until he was done packing and finishing running errands for his departure from Seattle.

The irony of this all was that he wasn't upset about making his family wait and no one in his family was upset about having to wait for him. The only person who was upset and stressed out throughout the entire ordeal was me. I was beyond angry with him about making his parents wait and about, frankly, waiting until last minute to do things. I absolutely despised that.

You would think that after learning no one else in the situation was upset, I would realize that stressing about things that were not my problem is stupid. But I don't. Throughout our relationship, this type of situation probably happened a million times. I'd be angry at him for not doing things at the time he said he would, or having to cancel on someone or something because he failed to have done earlier whatever it was that made him cancel.

Sometimes I think it's a guy thing, y'know. There are a couple of guys I know that seem to have this problem. They're good at doing things that are "important" on time, but when it comes to the little things in life that, to them, has room for readjustment, they will take advantage of it.

Not to say that I don't procrastinate...of course, I do; who doesn't? But I think fundamentally, the grey area is what is valued at being important for each of us. I am sure that I have procrastinated things in a way that pissed off someone else, who has a even more stringent timeline than I do.

The real issue for me here is two-fold:

1. I take on the stress of someone else's mistake when it's not my fault and I shouldn't feel bad about someone cancelling someone else because of me if it's not my fault
   Why make a mountain out of a molehill when no one else cares and it doesn't affect me? I get it. I'll work on that.
   But what if I am the person that gets affected, do I still have the right to get upset?
2. I volunteer to short-change myself because I am taking on someone else's stress (e.g., I can do the dishes if you have a lot of work to do at work, even though you played fooseball all day at work).
   This is probably especially bad for those around me, as Adam has told me many times that when I cut someone slack when I don't really want to, that someone will end up paying for the slack I cut later on anyway (i.e., him).

But #2 is slightly in the grey zone still. You have to cut someone slack sometimes for messing up their time management right? Sometimes a person will cancel on you or shed a responsibility making you have to take it on because they messed up. If it happens a lot, why wouldn't I get upset? If it happens just enough to irritate me, should I get upset?

Ok, yes, I realize this. Being upset is no good in general. Both my mom and Adam have told me that I get upset at these things because I put too much emphasis on fairness. "It's not fair that I have to do the dishes because you slacked off all day at work."

In life, there's no such thing as fairness, or so everyone else tells me. There is a concept in chinese called "eating loss" (吃虧). It's a very complex concept with a lot of implications,bBut put simply, the phrase can be used, really, any time when you feel like you've been short-changed on a situation. So the phrase can be used as such: "I hate going out with John because no matter what we do, I always have to eat the loss" (e.g., he's always taking advantage of me.)

When I was growing up, my mom used to teach me this adage all the time, any time I felt indignant: "Eating loss is the same as taking advantage" (吃虧就是佔便宜). It's a very buddhism-laced adage, as with most wisdoms in Chinese.

Being taken advantage of is the same as taking advantage? Honestly, it barely makes any sense reading it right now, how would it have made any sense to a five-year old child who is upset because your mom made you share your candy with your brother after he dropped his on the floor?

I won't get into how this phrase eventually made sense to me. But this phrase has also made me realize that the difference between fairness and pettiness is divided by a thin line. When you are eating the loss and you are complaining about being fair, according to Buddha or Confuscious, you're probably being petty.

So NTS:
1. don't be petty: cut people slack and be okay with it, it's okay to eat the loss for people you care about
2. don't stress about things that have nothing to do with you.

You can't control what other people do, and it's stupid to be upset at something you can't control. Logically,being upset at what other people do is stupid. All you can do is cut slack, be kind, and maintain an open-communication, especially when I know others are doing the same for me.