Colin

“When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

English singer-songwriter John Lennon (apocryphal)

Colin Nairn is 64 years old and lives in Vancouver, Canada, where I met him while travelling in early 2018. He is retired and had a number of jobs during his career including bus driver, mechanic, welder, locksmith, and steam engineer. But he most loved being a machinist in the aircraft industry. He has had a physical disability since the age of 14 which makes it hard to walk. He has one daughter. This is an edited version of a Skype conversation that I had with Colin in May 2018.

Jason: Hi Colin. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. I might start by asking if you could tell me what gives you the most fulfilment in life?

Colin: Thanks Jason! I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s service to others, helping other people, I think that’s the ultimate in fulfilment as opposed to just doing whatever I want for myself. I do quite a few activities that are about helping others and I find that if I don’t then I get depressed. So I host a conversational English group for students from around the world, I chair Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings and I speak at high schools about AA because I want the kids to at least be aware that there’s help if they get into a mess. So really I go anywhere that I see people who are trying to help themselves.

But what I’ve learned over the years is that it comes down to balance in the end because most people have to make a living and make a life. There’s a guy that used to make my shoes for me. I’d go to his house – he’s a really old guy now, he’s married, he’s got two grown-up kids, they’re doctors – and his house was immaculate. He was one of the kindest, most soft-spoken people you could ever meet, and he cared about other people, but he still did his work. I don’t think he did a lot of, or even any, volunteer work, and that’s what I mean, it’s not so much about going to Africa or going to India and taking care of all the homeless people. It’s about our attitude and how we treat other people.

Jason: So what do you look for in other people then?

Colin: You know, the number one thing I look for in other people is sincerity. And the other thing is kindness. Those are the two top qualities that I look for. I don’t care if someone’s screwing up, as long as they’re sincere. When they’ve got an agenda, when their motives are ulterior, when they talk like they’ve got all the answers and they just want to scoff, I don’t like that. But if you can talk to someone and they tell you the truth – as opposed to putting on a front, that their life is perfect, those are the insincere people, the people that have the false front, that “oh, everything’s fine” – but the people that you can have honest discussions with, that’s the sincerity that I’m looking for.

Jason: You’ve told me a bit about your life before, Colin, and I think it’s a really inspiring story. But before we get to that, can I ask how you’re feeling about your life right now?

Colin: Overall I’m pretty serene, pretty much at peace, but that’s relatively speaking to what it used to be like, when life was hell. But it’s not anymore. This is the best it’s ever been!

Jason: And what did your life used to be like?

Colin: You know, Jason, prior to the last five years, I was doing it all my way. I was obstinate and stubborn, and I justified what I was doing. I denied anything else, and I was constantly defending myself because I always felt like I was being attacked. It was just the journey that I was on. There were a lot of things that intervened, a lot of really bad things that happened to me. For example, a doctor tried to amputate my leg to cover up a bad mistake that he had made, I was in a bad marriage etc. All kinds of negative things were in my life and I was unable to deal with all of it. I finally snapped in 1986 and drove my car at high speed intending to kill myself … but that’s not what happened.

After I had the accident I remember I was sitting in a jail cell and banging my head against the wall because I’d just killed somebody, and a policeman came up to the window of my cell and he said, “if you want to honour the young man that you killed, you go on to lead an honourable life”. And I just thought “fuck you, ain’t gonna happen!”. And I made a decision then that I was going to become a workaholic, an alcoholic, a drug addict, and commit suicide, as opposed to just committing suicide right away because that wouldn’t be fair to society or to the family of the boy that I killed. So I made a decision to do just that and that’s what I did for about the next 30 years.

Jason: That sounds like a very traumatic experience, Colin. Can I ask how you’ve been able to turn your life around so much recently?

Colin: You know it’s unfortunate that I had to go to such an extreme that when I went to my first AA meeting five years ago I was ready to die. That was going to be the last meeting I ever went to, and then I was coming home to commit suicide. I was going to drink myself to death. I didn’t care anymore. I’d given up on life. But then one of the guys at the meeting said “drinking is not your problem, thinking is your problem”. My whole life changed when he said that, my attitudes changed, my focus changed, and I said to myself, “I’ve got a chance here, maybe I can do something”. And I set about doing it!

So instead of beating myself up for killing that kid 30 years ago, and throwing my life away, which was a total mistake, now I’ve got rid of all, well not all, but almost all, the self-deprecating, negative thoughts. I’ve finally become the person that I really wanted to be. I’ve become like my mother and one of my uncles, who I really admired, who were very kind people. I became a decent person, and I still want to go along that road.

Jason: I think that’s an amazing transformation. How did you make such a big change?

Colin: I realised I’d spent most of my life looking on the outside to fill a hole on the inside, that everything I’d been doing was to prove to myself or society that I was a useful person. So I was looking on the outside through drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, relationships, and on and on and on, trying to fill this hole on the inside.

Then I took up meditation five years ago and I started doing the 12-step program through AA at the same time. And I found what I’d been looking for, and what I’d been looking for was love. And I found it inside when I did the meditation and I found out “here are my thoughts, they’re negative, they’re not true, let them go”, and they would go away, and another one would come, and it would go away, and in the silence in between, this is what Eckhart Tolle talks about, is where the subtle answers can be found. He said that’s where God is, in the silence between the thoughts. So I kept doing it, and I ended up finding that when I got rid of the entire negative belief system that I had, what was left was me. And it was love. I discovered that I’m actually a pretty good person, I’m not the asshole that I thought I was, when I got rid of all these external beliefs that I’d picked up, and I did it through meditation.

So I think everything is love and I think the whole purpose of our life is about love, that is the answer, the ultimate answer is love. And it’s inside. It’s not something that I’m going to get from somewhere else, or somebody else. So, at the very least, out of meditation and the book The Power of Now, I have a roadmap and a guide for how to live my life in a world that bewildered me before. It’s not so bewildering anymore.

So I’m much more at peace, but I want more of that serenity.

Jason: Is there anything you’re still trying to work on now?

Colin: One of the character defects that I’ve been working on for a while is to give up the need for recognition and appreciation, in other words ‘what do other people think?’. And another one is to learn how to listen better. So instead of going to the AA meetings and telling my life story so I say something profound or get recognition, I started chairing the meetings because you don’t get to share anything, you just organise the meeting, and that’s what I’ve been doing for months, and it really worked, because now I really appreciate what other people have to say, and I’m more sensitive to their need for appreciation and recognition. Very much my focus is changing from me to my fellow human beings. I try to do what Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world”. And what I get out of that is that instead of trying to change the world, change yourself first. So that’s what I’m working on.

Jason: You said just before that you want more of the serenity that you’ve found?

Colin: What I’ve noticed as I’ve gone through my life and as I’ve got older is that every time I achieve some level of serenity or peace, it then becomes “now what?”, “what’s next?”, because this isn’t it, it’s never enough. What Eckart Tolle says is that not being here, now, is what causes suffering. It’s that the success, the happiness, is in the future, it’s when I get there, when I get the big raise, when I get the wife, whatever. So I’m trying to learn to live in the now, like Eckhart Tolle, because I can relate to what he said, because I had that experience when I was 18. And even if I don’t have that experience again, at the very least the book The Power of Now has given me a roadmap for how to live my life and helped me tremendously in the reality of this world, as opposed to the lofty idea of achieving enlightenment.

Jason: Can you tell me about the experience you had when you were 18?

Colin: When I was 18 I was working in a paper mill studying to be a steam engineer. My job consisted of operating two big steam engines, basically monitoring them once an hour. This gave me about seven hours of free time. For about four months I used this time to study spirituality. I had tremendous faith in my friend, my supervisor, who believed we could experience God in this lifetime.

Then one night I was walking to take some temperature and pressure readings. I had a matchbox and a pencil to write down the readings. Suddenly I saw a fog on my mind. It was like I was standing inside myself and there was a black salad bowl upside down on top of my mind. This amazed me, it was real and I never knew it was there. I thought I can spend the rest of my life trying to remove the fog, and then it gradually started receding from the front of my head to the back and it disappeared.

I was suddenly super aware; my mind was clear. I looked around at all the machinery that I didn’t understand and it no longer baffled me. I knew how the matches and pencil in my hand were made. I was ecstatic. Then the fog started to come back, it came all the way to the front of my head—and “poof”—here I am—in the fog again. Here we all are!

Jason: Is there any advice that you give to people at AA or the students you talk to?

Colin: The students ask me, this is the question that comes up quite often, especially with the young girls, they ask me: “How can I tell if a boyfriend is right for me?”. And I tell them, “If he wants what’s best for you instead of what’s best for him, that’s how you can tell”. In other words, he’s not self‑centred and selfish, it’s not all about him. The other advice I give them is to find a career that they love. These students are quite well off and are educated and have been to university, and a few of them have told me, “I went and got a degree and I don’t even like what I do so I’m changing careers” or “I don’t know what to do, what should I do?”. I tell them all the same thing. Find what you love and do that. Don’t worry about the money. It will come. But don’t go after the money only because that won’t bring you happiness.