So, “I’m upset, I’ve upset myself. They did it to me.” Wrong. “I did it to me.” Wrong. It’s your programming that’s doing it to you. It’s the culture that’s doing it to you. This is the way you’ve been brought up; this is the way you’ve been trained.

You know, one of the signs of maturity is the following. It’s very hard to define maturity, but I’ve come up with a fairly workable definition: Maturity is when you no longer blame anyone. You don’t blame others, you don’t blame yourself. You see what’s wrong, and you set about remedying it. That’s one pretty good sign of maturity.

You know, you’d be amazed how childish people are. They’re so childish. I mean, have you seen a little child? As a matter of fact, you can almost take for granted that, in its present state of lunacy, 99.999 percent of humanity is childish. Just hang around. Hang around for half a day; you’ll find our greatest men and women indulging in acts of childishness, utterly childish.

You know the way a child behaves? I don’t know about here in the States, but in India, they bump their knee into a table and say, “Waaah.” Then everybody goes, “Who hit you, the table? Naughty table. Naughty table.” And so, “Oh, oh, oh, table, Naughty table.” And the kid feels good. See how childish that is? So now they’re coming to you and they ask, “Now, who hit you?”

“My wife, my husband, my superior.”

“Aren’t they awful? They’re terrible.” And the little baby is feeling good. And he’s the president of a big association, or a country, or whatever.

My God, how childish can people get? And they don’t know their childishness. They’ve got to blame somebody, but, no. Maturity is understanding that no one is to blame. Or better still, and more accurately put, maturity is not giving yourself the childish emotional outlet of blaming others or yourself but, rather, seeing what went wrong and setting about remedying it. Doing something about it. See? So, they’re not to blame. It’s the programming that’s doing this to you.

I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s important. I’m going to offer you an exercise. It will only take a couple of minutes. See if it has any effect on you.

Think of something that until now you would have said has upset you. And understand that it wasn’t that thing or that person that upset you. It was your programming. It wasn’t their meanness, it wasn’t their disapproval, it wasn’t their rejection, it wasn’t their failure. It was your programming that upset you. And see what happens to you.

When you’re able to do this repeatedly, again and again, the general universal experience is the following:

First step: “Gee, this thing upset me.”

Second step: “Huh-uh, it wasn’t this thing that upset me; it was my programming that upset me. So, I don’t have to deploy all of my energies fighting that outside thing, right?” Right. “I don’t have to spend all my emotional energies blaming that outside thing.” That’s right.

Funny how this thing gets depleted. It keeps going down. Because as long as I’ve got an enemy out there who’s upsetting me, I’m demanding that my enemy change. I’m refusing to give up my upset unless that thing has changed. Am I clear enough? If I think someone is upsetting me, then as long as he’s there and he’s indulging in the behavior that I say is upsetting, I’m refusing to give up my upset unless he reforms, he changes, he disappears, he gets away or whatever.

But let’s suppose life persists in being a certain way so you continue to be upset. Now, the moment you say, “Hey , wait a minute. It’s not life, it’s my programming,” then someone could be right here, doing something, and you needn’t be upset.

You Don’t Have to Fix It

Now, for a while, you’re getting less and less upset about fewer and fewer things. Now comes the big- pardon me, I don’t mean to be insulting or anything, but you’re going to enjoy this- now comes the big American question: How do we fix it?

“He’s not upsetting me. I’m not upsetting me. The programming is upsetting me.” How do you fix this? You know the big Oriental answer? You don’t fix it. You let it be. It will go away. The more you try to fix it, the stronger it gets.

Gee, that’s another mind-blowing thing: Don’t fix it. Let it be. Let it be. It will go away. It really will. But don’t we need to know where this programming comes from? It helps to know, but it’s not necessary.

And if you’re hell-bent on getting it- “I’ve got to find out where it comes from and I’ve got to change it”- you’re going to make it worse. You can be sure of that. Lots of people never change because they’re so determined to change. They’re so determined that they never change. They’re so tense, they’re so anxious, that it gets worse.

So here’s another thing: We’re all the same. You know, the kind of stuff I give you here, I give in Japan and I give in India, and I give in Spain and Latin America, and everywhere else. And everywhere, people are the same. You’ve got a thin veneer of culture that’s different, but deep down we’re all the same. The same problems are everywhere. The hatred is the same. The conflict is the same. The guilt is the same. The dependence on people’s opinions and the emotional dependence on approval are the same. It’s exactly the same. Just scrape off the exterior culture, we’re all the same.

Now, everywhere people are trying to “fix it” too. How do I change it? You don’t change it; you understand it. You look at it, you observe it. It will take care of itself. Then what happens is that you don’t change it; life changes it. Nature changes it. The way you don’t heal yourself, nature heals itself. You just do something to aid nature.

When something happens that we commonly say upsets us, it isn’t the thing that upsets us. Life is not rough on us. Life is easy. It’s our programming that is rough on us. Life is easy. Life is delightful. Think of my friend Ramchandra, the rickshaw puller. So it isn’t this thing outside that’s causing the upset. It isn’t you that are causing the upset. It’s your programming.

From Rediscovering Life: Awaken to Reality by: Anthony De Mello