How Not to Be a Hot Mess - A Survival Guide for Modern Life - Craig Hase Page 0,10

for no obvious reason.4 And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when we’re talking about all the ways narcissists sabotage their own joy.

So a jerk is somebody who causes harm. In big ways and small ways. They’re selfish, maybe even narcissistic, and being that way actually doesn’t lead to contentment or good cheer. It leads to misery and isolation. Therefore—and I hope you’re coming to this conclusion now in your own mind and heart—it would be wonderful not to be a jerk.

But here’s the kicker, a time-honored semi-Buddhist insight: all of us have a little jerk living inside us somewhere. The part of us that wants what it wants, that doesn’t care about others’ feelings, that’s totally going to snag that parking spot outside the grocery store even though the mom with two kids so obviously got there first. And if we want to be happy long term, with flourishing friendships and a more-or-less stable sense of purpose and good cheer, we’ll need to stay alert to that self-sabotaging part of ourselves and choose something different.

So in the end, what we want to do is practice some version of mindfulness. We want to see clearly the jerkiness in others, and navigate those relationships. Conversely, we want to see the jerkiness in ourselves, and mitigate the moments when these tendencies flare up. Along the way you’ll want to keep an eye on your mind, keep an eye on your heart, and notice what you’re doing. It’s good to spot when you’re living up to your basic values, and important to know when you’re not.

On that note, let’s talk about some basic values I bet we probably share. We’ll start with the really-truly-basic and then go from there. For example: don’t kill.

DON’T KILL

I’ll just go ahead and assume you didn’t kill anybody today. Congratulations! You’ve just accomplished the first, most fundamental level of not being a jerk.

Now, you might think “no killing” is a low bar to set. But it’s worth noting that, for the vast run of human history, most cultures condoned killing under a host of circumstances that we would find a little surprising today. Like blood feuds, petty theft, adultery, witchcraft, really mean insults, or just when the other guy was from a different tribe or culture and you kind of wanted his stuff. And of course anybody who picks up the occasional newspaper knows humanity has yet to master the art of nonviolence.

So not killing each other is a big deal. And we should all be good and proud of that. But, as with all these pieces of advice, there are layers.

In today’s world, there are lots of ways that we commit acts of violence besides using a bayonet. Even if we’re not actually poisoning our neighbors to get our hands on their HDTV, we’re still, most of us, participating in acts that harm—and most of these are verbal, in one way or another. Perhaps a story could help illustrate this point.

I lived in a Zen monastery for a while. Six years, all told. Now, when I tell people I lived in a Zen monastery in the remote mountains of Colorado—when I show them pictures of the Japanese tea house and the black meditation cushions all in a row—they usually say something like “That must have been so peaceful.”

Yeah, no. It wasn’t. A monastery is a training ground. You’re up at 3:30 in the morning. You’re meditating for hours every day. There’s no personal space. You don’t get days off. And all of you are stuck together in your black robes and your weird habits for months at a time—no one coming, no one going, and no way out. It’s like a pot you put on to boil and then forgot about. Or like a submarine that’s just dived way down and won’t see sunlight for a season.

Add to that the fact that I lived my time in the monastery for the better part of my twenties—a time when I had yet to become the ultra-smooth communicator that I am today (my closest friends will recognize this as sarcasm)—and you get a recipe for some exhilarating conflagrations.

Enter Anthony. Anthony owned a bookstore in the Mission in San Francisco. He was a longtime Zen student, in his fifties, with a crew cut, a bag full of government conspiracy theories, and an excessively short fuse.

When Anthony came to the monastery, he had the misfortune of being under my auspices. I was the work leader—a position that entailed me, at