Happy in Adversity: A Guide to Being Well No Matter What

By Guillermo Cordero

Misfortune such as death, failure, loneliness, disappointment, abandonment, limitations, illness, and several more affect without distinction (and sometimes without mercy) all human beings regardless of origin, nationality, social status, colour, sexual orientation, gender, beliefs, and family composition.

Some are affected with more or less intensity and frequency, but inevitably all mortals have to face tragedy sooner or later.

In all cases, we have the option of being well or miserable, and the decision is ours to make. Fate is never against us; it just happens, and adapting to it is easier than we have been told.

You will find here simple but invaluable concepts that will help you regain control of your thoughts and actions to lead a happy and meaningful life regardless of what happens around you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Nov 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982210755

Guillermo Cordero

Guillermo Cordero was born in Bogotá on October 23, 1959. In his native Colombia, he took a very extensive academic and technical training, which included architectural drawing, English, a bachelor’s degree in architecture, and a postgraduate degree in Marketing Management. In Toronto, Canada, he increased his training, taking intensive English courses, French, a 3-year university program in construction science and a wide variety of courses in technical representation, sustainable construction, construction documents and preparation of technical specifications. These studies allowed him to obtain several important designations to solidify his credibility in a competitive and complex industry. Through his professional development, he realized a somewhat disappointing fact: all this rigorous academic instruction served him to defend himself well on a professional level, but it did not prepare him to face adversity in life. In the university classrooms they did not teach him that life was uncertain. None of his renowned professors mentioned that failure was sometimes impossible to avoid. In no teaching center they showed him the way to recover after a certain emotional blow. In the lecture rooms he learned to solve complex technical situations, but not to understand that things sometimes go well and sometimes badly, and that it is simply the natural process of the universe. One day, after many complications, he began to read and his life changed forever. And he did not have to invent or acquire anything; He had the wisdom and the necessary tools within, like all of us, from the womb.

Book preview

Getting the Bad News

Suddenly, it feels like my head is in a tunnel or a metallic box. All sounds have a strange echo. I then know what is coming.

It seems like my soul is leaving my body; it starts at my feet and goes up slowly, weakening my arms and legs. At the same time, I have a funny feeling and perceive a particular smell and taste. My chest feels empty.

About a year ago, when my wife got pregnant, I started feeling something I had never felt before. I could not describe it then. I can do so a bit better now.

In a couple of seconds, my soul escapes through my head, warming up the base of the skull and leaving me with a feverish chill. My breathing rate is slightly accelerated; I guess my heart rate is too.

It is a very uncomfortable feeling, but my senses are not affected, and I never lose the ability to walk, drive or talk while it lasts. This has been happening once or twice a day for the last 12 months. In addition to these episodes, several times a day, I feel like I am on the edge of an abyss and about to have another episode, but it is only momentary—awkward and uncomfortable but momentary—and it keeps happening!

***

Although I have faced many stressful situations in life, for some reason I do not quite understand completely, I tend to remain calm. If I get agitated, it does not last long. I feel that it is not even my merit; I have been like this since childhood. It just happens without trying. Now as an adult and after reading dozens of books on different dogmas and having extensively studied the subject of happiness, I have reinforced this characteristic to promote these reactions consciously. I think my most significant contribution has been to understand and respect my limitations, change what I can change and not worry about changing the unchangeable—well, and turn a deaf ear to the number of manipulative messages conveyed by the media and the conventional wisdom.

It could be described as permanent tranquility. This characteristic has helped me through rough times without affecting my well-being permanently or for long periods of time. Sometimes, I am surprised myself (not like before, as I now understand it better) to see how easily I get back on my feet. Sometimes I simply witness what is happening around me, shrug my shoulders and just go get a coffee with resignation. Generally, I do not engage in arguments that I consider useless and I do not think or act the same as most people do. For this reason, I have been accused of many things, including being irresponsible and passive or lacking ambition; I have been told there is no blood in my veins.

I was once kicked off of a soccer team for refusing to take part in a fight that we’d initiated and that was unfair.

On top of that, when asked, I told the referee what I had seen—I was supposed to lie as a sign of backing up the team.

Another time, after a crucial goal, I turned back to the goalie I had scored the goal against and helped him up instead of running and jumping like we had found the cure for cancer.

To add insult to injury, when we lost the championship, I did not cry or accuse the referee of being biased. Instead, I went to say hi to friends on the opposite team and congratulated them on the cup.

The coach was definitely right when he said to me, You do not have the guts to play competitive sports. Yes, Coach, had I listened then, I would have saved myself many headaches!

Of course, there are exceptions. On occasions, I have wasted a lot of energy trying to change the unchangeable. And despite my irritating calm in the face of some events, some situations turn me into an unyielding and irascible ogre.

With time and the help of several books, most of them by Buddhist authors, I have learned that these exceptions are precisely signals sent by the body to let me know where more work is needed. Behind every detail that makes me lose it, there is an interior aspect of my personality that is crying for help and needs to be better understood. There is a hidden learning opportunity every time we snap.

The family doctor kept saying everything was fine. With every visit, I had a new test done, and the results were identical: You are healthy.

Interestingly, and to prove the permanent tranquility or irritating calm, depending on who we ask, it was the doctor who was losing patience with my insistence. Everything is fine! But my body did not seem to get it.

He finally agreed to send me to get a CT scan. The radiologist, who was not very friendly, at some point during the exam asked whether I was allergic to contrast dyes.

After I mentioned a reaction to iodine a few years before during an arthroscopy, she said the scan could not be completed. The partial results would be sent immediately to my family doctor.

With a smile she had not shown the entire morning, she insisted I call the doctor right away and then said, Good luck, hon.

Hearing this from the radiologist was not encouraging. But, as always, I shrugged my shoulders and went to have coffee with a client.

The doctor left this message on my phone: Got the results of your scan, and we need to discuss them right away. Do not bother calling; just come in as soon as you hear this.

Such a message could be scary—even for me.

While I was waiting, he came out to call some patients and never looked me in the eye. He was avoiding me; he felt sorry for me! I was worried for the first time.

Finally, when it was my turn, he said, I should apologize for my voice mail; I must have gotten you worried.

Gotten me worried? I know at least two people who would have jumped from a bridge after a message like that. He said a lump had been found in my head and recommended I go to the emergency room of a hospital to have an MRI taken immediately. The wait for an exam like this could be four to six months, but at the ER, it would be performed the same day.

After eight hours at the ER, the diagnosis was confirmed.

There was a mass the size of a Ping-Pong ball on the right side of my head. It was called a meningioma and seemed to be non-malignant. (It sounds contradictory that they call a tumour benign.) I asked how he could be sure it was not malignant without a biopsy. The answer was they had seen hundreds of those tumours, and based on the shape and contrast, the diagnosis was somewhat accurate.

When I saw him a few days later, he confirmed (he believed) the tumour was not malignant but that it was in a complicated area and should be removed.

Because of the location and potential complications, he preferred to refer me to one of his teachers who had more experience with this kind of condition.

I prefer to use the word tumour even though it sounds scary to some. The truth is a word does not make things worse; the way we see things does! If we see a tumour as an accumulation of cells at the wrong place, caused by mental and physical imbalance, we can always find its origin and change it. With some luck, we will be able to do it in time. If, on the contrary, we see it as an abnormality that can be corrected magically by a deity or an entity external to us? Good luck, hon!

The neurosurgeon prescribed antiseizure pills because he was worried about me having one while driving.

I started reading about the side effects with my wife by my side. She was worried about the future, and I found what I was reading funny. By the way, only someone like me could find this funny! Extreme sadness, suicidal thoughts, suicidal attempts, emotional fragility, uncontrollable crying for no reason"—and they expect to help me with this?

My wife said, Honey, if you get any of those thoughts, you will let me know, right?

Of course, I will leave you a note!

It is one thing to read about emotional fragility in the medicine’s fine print and another to start crying for everything. And even though since I started doing voluntary work with terminally ill people a few years ago, I cry easily, this was too much!

Any little gesture of kindness toward me would bring me to tears. If someone said something nice, if I saw a person having a hard time moving around because of old age or physical limitations, kids, elders, everything made me cry—everything except rude people.

Incredibly enough, I started enjoying those among my clients who were not very friendly. And everything kept getting better and better. With them, at least I was safe and was not going to cry like a baby. The ruder and more difficult they were, the stronger I felt. You see? There is something good even in adverse situations.

The only downside of having stopped the medication is that I cannot blame my easy crying on it. It seems that this side effect keeps happening even after finishing the pills!

As an interesting fact, this growth gave me the chance to practice something I had been preaching for a while: there is something enjoyable in all situations, as desperate and hopeless as they may seem. There is a Zen story called The Tiger and the Strawberry, which can be used to illustrate this idea.

A man was walking the fields when he was attacked by a hungry tiger. The man ran as fast as he could, but at some point, he reached the edge of a cliff and had no other choice but to suspend himself from a vine