“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
If you want certainty you have it, right there. No matter where you live, the moment you step out of the house you can be certain that someone is going to ask you this. Where I come from, however, this question sounds slightly different. To make sure you are done, waiters or retailers would ask “anything else?, meaning “is there anything else you want?”. Of course, the meaning is the same, and yet the emphasis is different. By asking “anything else” the emphasis is put on what I want- the thing- whereas “anything else I can do for you” is way more personal, it’s less about the object and more about the action, what someone else has to do for you to get what you want.
Obviously the only reason I think about this is because I am a foreigner, and we foreigners take things literally. I am sure that if you have learnt a language, or travelled to other countries, you know what I am talking about. Speaking a language is one thing, being able to navigate life in a foreign culture is another. After landing in another country, there will always come a time when that ignorance will make you feel or be inadequate until you learn the language of the implicit.
Be it as it may, I am sharing this because this is one of those things that I cannot help but continue taking literally, a genius-in-the-bottle your-wish-is-my-command kind of thing. There I am, searching for my wallet with a smile on my face, my mind wondering about all those things that that fortunately oblivious waiter could do for me at this point in time in my life.
Now this is interesting, because if you have come this far, you may be already thinking about what are those things that I want, maybe you are asking yourself the same question, maybe you are projecting dirty thoughts on me, I don’t know. However, how long does it take for you to come up with an answer? How much time do you need to identify what another person- even a stranger- could do for you right now?
In my case, not long. I would be surprised if it were one second. It’s less, one of those quantities so little that I cannot even name or count. The reason for this is simple: we are constantly thinking about what we lack. In other words, we live in a mindset of scarcity.
Living in a mindset of scarcity is not related to what we actually have. Many of us have most of our needs met- maybe not all at the same time, but still enough to live a good life. It is not so much about what we have, but what we focus on.
This is how a single aspect of our lives, such as relationships, our body, money or work can become the main focus of our attention, permeating everything else. The world is perceived through the prism of that thing that we are missing, taking a whole different meaning. Watching a movie alone on a Friday night can be a treat or solitary confinement, depending on whether you are a parent in desperate need of “me time” or single craving for some Netflix and chill.
Now this is obvious, and yet we keep stubbornly believing that our happiness lies in things and not in our attitude towards things. Sometimes the issue is not that you are not in a relationship with someone, but that you don’t have a relationship with yourself. Sometimes the problem is not the body you have, but your belief that your body is all that there is to you.
Now close your eyes (well, read this first) and imagine that you wake up tomorrow and you have all the things you lack. Everything. Feel it.
Do you really need what you want to experience the feeling?
Maybe that is abundance. Maybe what you are craving cannot be contained in any of those things, because it’s more abstract, more complex, it is not the things but what they represent: love, recognition, connection…Maybe you can feel many of those values right here, right now.
Anything else?
