We don’t have to believe our thoughts.

This is not a new idea. It’s at least 3,000 years old. But I will try to illustrate it with what happened to me over the weekend.

On Saturday, I attended a wonderful event: a sardinada (sardine party) in a fishing village on the Catalan coast. Hundreds of freshly-caught sardines are barbecued over sand pits right on the beach, served with pan con tomate (bread smeared with garlic and tomato), and followed up with a dessert of hot ron cremat, or burnt rum. All this accompanied by a live band playing habaneras, songs from 19th-century Cuba, the era of Spanish colonization of the Caribbean: a lovely remnant of a largely ugly past. Afterwards, I went back to the cheap but charming mom-and-pop hotel I had booked for the occasion.

The night receptionist, a young Black man who looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s, let me in.

He was very friendly, even seemed strangely happy to see me. I was tired and had drunk some alcohol, and wanted to go right to my room. But he engaged me in conversation.

I willingly obliged. I felt a bit sorry for him. It seems like a lonely job, being the night receptionist at a mostly-empty hotel. I had first spoken to him in Spanish but he switched immediately to English.

“Do you speak English?” he said, in an accent that sounded African to me.

“Yes,” I said.

His face broke into a smile. “Are you from England?”

“No, I’m from the United States. You?”

“I am from the colonizer country. My father is from Jamaica and my mother is from Nigeria, but I was born in the colonizer country.”

I took that to mean that yes, he was from England, but I respected his perspective, which also happened to be correct. “I see, “ I said.

“I am so happy you are English,” he said. I had just told him that I am not English, but I didn’t care enough to correct him. I just wanted to go to my room.

“I feel so lonely not being able to speak English with people,” he added.

“It must be hard coming from a different country and having to adapt to so many different ways,” I offered. The conversation had started to feel weird, like I was suddenly playing a part in a play I hadn’t known I’d been cast in. He was the night receptionist. What was I, a therapist?

“Sit down for a moment,” he said, gesturing to the couch. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

The conversation about being from a different place continued. Obviously, it was something I could relate to, but it felt odd because of the inappropriateness of the situation.

Soon he said, “It’s very hard sometimes. The people here are very racist.”

More red flags. No doubt he had run into some racist people, but why was he telling me this?

I said, “I am sorry to hear that.”

He went on to generalize about the people “from here”: specifically, of Catalonia. But the examples he gave were not of overt racism, but rather that they are “not willing to help others”. He then went on to compare his perceptions of the people here to the people “where I am from”. The colonizer country where you are from, or your parents’ countries? Or your specific community within the colonizer country? I wondered but did not ask.

“Where I come from, the people open their doors for you immediately," he said. "If you need anything, they will happily give it to you, no questions asked. Where I come from, people are generous. Here, people are miserly and they keep their hearts closed. My people will be your friend instantly. Here, people don’t want to be your friend.”

Why are they obligated to be your friend? I thought.

But out loud, I said, “Uh-huh.” I didn’t wish to engage in a debate with this stranger about his opinions.

He then said, “Will you be my friend?”

“What?”

“You seem like a really nice person. When I saw you outside at the door, I just had a feeling: this person is a good person. Don’t ask me how I knew. I felt it.”

My needle on my bullshit detector had crossed into the red zone. “Uh… thank you,..” I mustered.

“Can we be friends?”

“Sure…” I lied, immediately unhappy with my answer, though I was also unhappy with the fact that this seemed like the only option if I didn’t want further problems. I was now very uncomfortable because I sensed that this conversation had veered out of the territory of appropriate a while ago and the petition for friendship was definite confirmation of it.

I highly doubted he made this pitch to male guests.

He followed up with: “Could we have a coffee sometime?”

Seeing my certainly panicked expression, he quickly added: “As friends.”

“I don’t think so,” I said without hesitation.

There are different ways a person - though, let’s be honest, usually it’s a woman in this situation - can reject unwanted invitations such as this. The one that had immediately come to mind - the easiest, most obvious and probably most utilized one, “I’m in a relationship”/“I’m married” - is one I dislike for a couple of reasons.

First, it implies that you are unavailable only because another person -- usually assumed to be a man -- has “claimed” you. It ignores your own agency, implying that if only you didn’t “belong to” someone else, then you would be available for the taking, as if you’re part of the public space. In my opinion, ”I’m already taken” undermines the idea of women as equal human beings with their own desires, which are to be respected.

Second, I have had enough experiences of this kind to know that, regardless of the excuse you give, a certain kind of man won’t accept it anyway.

It now seemed clear that I was dealing with this kind of man. Besides being completely uncurious as to anything about me, he didn’t even try to fake curiosity. He asked me no questions about me or my life, just talked about himself. I was not a real person, but a sounding board, a receptacle for his thoughts.

And that was completely fine with me because he was not a friend. He was a stranger making me feel uncomfortable and I just wanted to get away.

“Why not? Just friends,” he pressed.

“No, thank you, I already have enough friends,” I said lightly, getting up to leave. Why don’t you make some male friends, who aren’t guests at your workplace? I added silently.

His face contorted with what looked like a mixture of disappointment and… betrayal??

A very bad sign. Did I owe him something?

“Okay, well, you have a good night then,” he said, forcing a smile.

“Yes, you too,” I said politely, and tried not to hurry too obviously up the stairs.

The energy we expend acting out a badly-written part in the same repetitive, tiresome play we never signed up to be in. Many women know this play all too well.

I thought that was the end of it. Unfortunately, it was not, because some drunken guests in a nearby room were having a loud party and making it impossible to sleep. I politely asked them to lower their voices; they did not. Since there were no phones in the rooms, I had to to go downstairs, back to this guy, and ask for his assistance.

He made a big show of indignation. “Don’t worry. I will go there right away and tell them to be quiet.”

“Thank you,” I said, and started to walk back upstairs. I wasn’t going to go with him; I had told him where the room was.

He didn’t come up. It was now after 3 in the morning. So I went back downstairs again. Had he misunderstood me? Or maybe other guests had arrived and he was busy.

Nope, he was alone down there. Before I could say anything, he said, “I am going up there now." Now we were both walking together: just what I had wanted to avoid. For obvious reasons, I avoided the very slow elevator and headed up the stairs. He followed behind me.

We got to the second floor, where the noisy guests were. My room was on the third floor. I waited on the landing as he talked to the guests, who could not see me. When they closed their door, I thanked him and turned to head upstairs.

“What room are you in?” he asked casually.

Why the hell does he need to know that?

“Good night, thank you,” I said, ignoring his question.

“Good night,” he said, tacitly accepting defeat. I quickly continued up to my room and locked the door.

I thought about this encounter until I fell asleep as well as the next morning.

Without negating his pain and indignation, which I trust are valid in many ways - I thought about how manipulative this man had been. How inappropriate, unprofessional, and even disturbing his actions had been.

How he had taken advantage of a person’s vulnerable situation - a solo, tired female traveler, returning late at night - exploited her sympathy by setting up a scenario of “people here are racists, no one wants to be my friend”, and then putting her in a position of having to either engage in unwanted conversation or reject him… thereby joining those racist, unfriendly folks he had described.

Apart from this, there was also the more serious issue of what kind of consequences, besides mere judgement, could ensue from rejecting him. This man was a stranger who I knew nothing about. A stranger who obviously had issues with women, boundaries, and entitlement.

No one should have to worry about shit like this when staying in a hotel.

I thought about how he tells himself, and others, a story about who the bad people are. A story of racism, of colonialism - all of which are truths, and realities of his life, the source of real injustice and suffering - while exempting himself from accountability to universally-accepted norms of behavior. Norms such as how to behave professionally when employed as a night receptionist at a hotel, not initiating manipulative personal conversations with guests, not asking them to be your “friend”, and not inviting solo female guests on coffee dates.

I could see how easily he might chalk up my rejection of his inappropriate request to racism. I didn’t want to be his “friend” because I was just like “those people” here: ungenerous, miserly, and racist. I doubt he can see his own sense of entitlement: towards women, towards the people of his host country. I doubt he can separate the different threads of his personal frustrations -- real loneliness and alienation, real encounters with racism and xenophobia -- from his own bad intentions and actions.

And why can’t he? Because he has a story in his head. A generic, one-size-fits-all story about racism and colonialism, about Catalans, and quite possibly about white people in general. Some of it based on truth, and some based on his own misinterpretation of reality.

The tragedy is that, until he learns to question his own thoughts and feelings, he will not know why he is being rejected. He will not know why he is lonely, why some people back away from him, why his life is not going the way he wanted. His misunderstanding of the causes of his pain will continue to lead him to cause pain to others. Yes, racism, colonization, and the impact they have had on his life are real. But he will not realize that the enemy is not women, or white women, or white people, or Catalans, or the colonizers.

The enemy is his blind belief in the stories he tells himself about why bad things happen to him. Stories in which the enemy is always other people, that prevent him from recognizing his own mistakes, learning from them, choosing to act differently the next time, and improving his own life.

I am using the example of this young man from Saturday night, but we all have stories in our heads. We can probably remember many examples from our own lives when our belief in a story set us on a mistaken course of action. Later, we realized the truth and most likely -- hopefully -- had to deal with the damage we had done.

But remember how convinced we were of these stories at the time!

I can remember many times when I misinterpreted something someone said or did. Or maybe thought they had done something that they didn’t even do. And I didn’t check to see if my interpretation was right, but instead, proceeded to react based on my misperceptions. And I added to the distress of the world.

I know I am not alone. Just check social media to see how quickly something can be misinterpreted, distorted, amplified, inflamed, and spread to many others, who in turn act the same hateful way. Suddenly the entire world is on fire.

One thing meditation has taught me is to be more aware of the fallibility of my thoughts and feelings. Yes, thoughts and feelings are real, in the sense that they exist, but they are not necessarily true. To be able to examine whether a thought or feeling has a basis in reality is a source of liberation, peace and real happiness.

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The next morning, I told the hotel owner -- a man whose parents had founded the hotel, who had been working in that hotel his entire life -- about what had happened. He was indignant. “That is completely unacceptable. I am happy you told me. I will talk to him tonight.”

“No, please not tonight because I will still be staying here. Wait until tomorrow to talk to him.”

“In that case, I will wait until tomorrow. Of course.”

I was satisfied. Good for me, good for the hotel, good for the world, and good for the young man. Yes, good for him especially. Now he will receive a lesson about boundaries and professionalism, and he can take it or leave it. Though I hope he will take it and improve from it — because I saw his pain was real, I have compassion for him, and I do wish for him to succeed — the choice is in his hands.

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My I be safe from harm.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I live with ease.

May others -- including my adversaries -- be safe from harm.
May they be happy.
May they be healthy.
May they live with ease.

May all beings be free from the shackles of ignorance, craving, aversion, and delusion.

May all beings be happy.

-Buddhist metta meditation prayer

Header photo by Asiama Junior