Be Nobody (32 page)

 Next time you're at a restaurant, pay for some stranger's dinner. Just randomly select someone, call the waiter or waitress over, and secretly pick up that person's tab. You can sneak a peek at the person's reaction when they are told that an anonymous benefactor has paid their bill, and surreptitiously share in the little unexpected spike of happiness you brought to someone else's life.

 There's a similar practice that's currently gaining traction in some cities. Next time you go to Starbucks for your grande soy decaf nonfat sugar-free latte, lean in and quietly whisper to the barista that you will be paying for two coffees—one for you and one for the next person in line. And be sure to tell the server not to mention who paid it forward.

•  •  •

If you can't be anonymous, at least work at being
unfabulous
. The individual self strives to be remarkable, cool, clever, important, and distinctive. Somebody who is trying to be more like nobody reverses this impulse and endeavors to be ordinary, common, simple, nondescript, and undistinguished.

In this day and age of reality television, of Facebook and Twitter self-promotion, of the endless quest to be
more of a real somebody
, it's really fighting the power to be content with being average and unfabulous.

One simple way to do this is to reduce one's preferences in life—what one prefers to wear and to eat, which people we prefer to be around—and learn to be more
equanimous
. Our preferences help to define us as unique individuals, and so being a little more
non-preferential
and
impartial
is another way to train somebody to be more nobody-like.

I had a habit for several years of never buying new clothes. When I needed something to wear, instead of going to Macy's, I went to the Salvation Army. There's nice stuff at Sal's, especially at outlets located in affluent neighborhoods—a dirty little secret for minimizing the austerity of this practice!—and I saved a lot of money by shopping exclusively at such places.

But all the clothing at secondhand stores is, of course, used; it has been previously selected, bought, worn, and then discarded by someone you don't know. And there's something about wearing other people's clothes that makes an impression on one's psyche. You usually feel a little less fabulous, and a lot more like an Ordinary Joe, when you pull on a five-dollar secondhand shirt that you are aware used to belong to some stranger.

Looking totally unfabulous was, of course, the original intent behind the robes worn by monks, nuns, priests, imams, and other clergy. These are
uniforms
, designed to make every individual look alike. Nowadays such a presentation often conveys the exact opposite impression—“Here's somebody dressed differently who must be
special
!”—and when I was wearing the robes it made me very uncomfortable to imagine people thinking this. The real purpose of such a uniform was to iron out particularities (and to make one's sartorial choices every morning much easier), not to confer some exceptional status.

Even while I was still an ordained monk, I eventually made the decision to appear in public as an ordinary layman. Dropping
the unusual veneer provided by the flowing red robes took down a barrier between me and the people around me. It was hard at first—the costume does provide a kind of protective shield—but the advantages of appearing “normal” outweighed the vulnerability that accompanied looking like an ordinary Clark Kent instead of giving the impression of being some kind of spiritual Superman.

There's a great virtue in appearing as an Ordinary Joe. Instead of setting ourselves apart by what we wear, we can send a different message when we don clothing more typical and common to whatever context we find ourselves in. For some this will mean an off-the-rack business suit rather than a tailored Brooks Brothers ensemble, while for others it will entail unbranded and inexpensive jeans and T-shirts rather than whatever new and cool garb is currently in fashion.

Another way to feel less distinctive is to minimize one's food preferences. I know there are plenty of people who really like those fungi known as mushrooms, and there are others who enjoy that fruit with the suitably unappetizing name “eggplant.” But I don't particularly care for either—
I am somebody
, defined in part as a person who doesn't prefer such supposed edibles.

And I avoid them if possible. But when someone has gone to the trouble of cooking a meal that includes such items, I eat them. It's not a big deal, but this act, in its small way, diminishes the ego's need to be a special somebody, distinguished by what one will and will not eat.

This practice may be a lot more challenging for self-defined vegans or vegetarians. But there's an ancient instruction for monks and nuns—those who are professionally committed to humility and self-effacement—to uncomplainingly accept and eat whatever is put before them, without making a fuss about “being” one thing or another when it comes to food.

It is a time-honored religious practice to be less picky and just eat what has been offered. One of my students spent several years
living as a Buddhist nun in England, where they maintained this tradition. Every day, she told me, the monastics would go to the local village, begging bowls in hand, and stand and wait for edible donations. The villagers would come along and put whatever they could give into the bowls—and in whatever order: carrots on top of ice cream, cheeseburgers piled onto lentils. And that was dinner; that's what the ordained would eat.

One need not go to such extremes to benefit from a practice of not being so particular about what one consumes. While there are undoubtedly many benefits to a vegetarian or vegan diet, being overly attached to what one prefers to eat strengthens rather than weakens the individual's sense of distinctiveness.

Being less preferential about what one wears and eats is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to being
unfabulous
. There are countless ways in which we can train ourselves to be less demanding and more accepting, less exclusive and more inclusive, less of a special somebody and more of an Ordinary Joe.

It's like this now
—now there's only this one shirt that fits me on the rack; now there are mushrooms on my plate; now someone has prepared and served me a cheeseburger.

And now I find myself with this kind of person. We all have preferences when it comes to the people we choose to be with. And we all tend to hang out with pretty much the same kinds of people—people who are more or less like ourselves. Getting along with others who are not in our social clique is yet another way to be more nobody-like in our daily lives.

•  •  •

In the 1983 mockumentary
Zelig
, Woody Allen portrays a character who so badly wants to fit into his social surroundings that he
literally takes on the physical characteristics of those around him. This “human chameleon” transforms into a rich patrician when around the
Great Gatsby
set, and then into a plain-speaking regular guy when he's with the servants. He becomes a Native American, an African American, and a Hasidic Jew when around such kinds of people.

This spoof displays, by means of an extreme caricature, the perils of conformity. But read in a different way, it also can be viewed as a comic version of the serious spiritual practice of living like an Ordinary Joe.

As we've argued in this book, the need to be unique and special is itself unexceptional and general to us all. It is not a sign of our distinctiveness to want to be distinctive. The deeper conformity we are all susceptible to is our common and quite ordinary desire to be extraordinary and set apart—to be a
real somebody
.

When with others, somebody who is trying to be more nobody-like tries to fit into the situation and to make others feel more at ease. Instead of clinging to our uniqueness and specialness, when we're with other people, especially those who appear different from ourselves, we remember the more fundamental ways in which we are all alike. The “somebody self” who is working at being more nobody-like feels more affinity to the others who come within his or her purview.

We are all human, and nothing human can be completely foreign to any of us. So when you encounter the checkout girl at the supermarket or the driver of your taxi or the fellow behind the counter at the dry cleaners, just ask about their day, tell a little joke, and treat them with respect. It doesn't take much to make another person's life a little better, but it does require acknowledging them as human beings fundamentally no different from oneself.

When you're with people who are different from you—whether they're a plumber from New York or a cowboy from Tucson—take
an interest in what that kind of life must be like, learn a little bit about what's entailed in doing that for a living. When you're around rich people, stop with the class struggle already and recall that they're essentially as ordinary as you are. When you're with people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds, remember that they're basically just like you—burdened with the same kinds of problems, harboring the same desires for happiness, and endowed with the same fundamental true nature.

It was in part out of such considerations that, in October of 2013, I made the difficult decision to give back my monk's vows after living for eight years as an ordained monastic. While I have only admiration and respect for those who commit to this kind of life, for me personally being a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition no longer seemed to accord with my developing nondenominational spiritual orientation, nor with the desideratum to try to live more as a nobody instead of a special somebody. The very terms “monk” and “monastic” are derived from the Greek word for “alone” (
monos
), and can be interpreted to refer to someone who has set themselves apart from others.

As the scripture says, “Give up such distinctions as, ‘I am so-and-so, but not such-and-such.' ”
³¹
Working to be more of an Ordinary Joe in our interactions with others helps us to recognize the real bonds that we share with every other person.

This is not a matter of being inauthentic or pretending to be someone you're not—you don't have to turn into Zelig, the “human chameleon.” But we can authentically think and act less like the special somebody we might believe we are, because we are all authentically and really nobody.

And when we're in between being nobody, we're all authentically just “everyday people,” trying our best to get through life. So if you need some help as you interact as Ordinary Joe with others who
seem quite different from yourself, you can hum the old Sly and the Family Stone song and remember the refrain:

I'm everyday people, yeah yeah  .  . .

Oh sha sha—we got to live together.
³²

Yes (oh sha sha), we really do have to live together. None of us is an island; our human archipelago is actually one big land mass under the surface. As Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has declared, the whole purpose of our lives is to overcome our sense that we are isolated, discrete individuals: “We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”
³³

Grasping onto our individuality and uniqueness—to the “somebody self” we've talked about so much in this book—is premised upon and further propagates this “illusion of separateness.” Some of our strongest inborn instincts—this is the “devil” part of us—encourage the selfishness that detaches us from others. And our modern culture of narcissism and self-promotion ratifies and exacerbates our innate egoism.

But all this self-centeredness is based on illusion, not reality, and the inner “angel” who suspects this needs to have her voice amplified. The self we are so centered on—independent, disconnected, and alone—doesn't really exist at all, and the idea that we pursue our own happiness by feeding this phantom is wholly misguided.