It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

by Sylvia Boorstein

One of the ways we build intimate relationships with other people is by sharing our fears with them, telling them the things that still frighten us. We learn to say to each other, “I’d like you to know this is my alarm button about being left, and I had it installed at a time when my mother wasn’t there to protect me from my fear of abandonment.” Our partners in relationship, as we begin to describe our own alarm wiring, can begin to acquaint us with diagrams of theirs. “As long as you showed me your alarm wiring scheme, here’s a blueprint for mine.” When we begin to appreciate the ways in which people have been frightened in their lives, we can be compassionate toward them rather than angry. Instead of saying, “Oh, I’m so angry I’m stuck with this person the whole rest of my life,” we can begin to feel, “Oh, I’m very sad that this person whom I feel so tenderly toward has all these awful buttons. How terrible it must have been for her or him to have needed to install all these alarm buttons for protection.”