Wisdom from Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

I have written several times about the inspiring wisdom from Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. He is perhaps one of the people I most admire even though this Quebecois leader is fictional.

Yes he is the creation of novelist Louise Penny, and I know that means that it is she who is actually the wise one, but she writes him so well that he remains a real –and really smart—person to me. I think he is of highest value to anyone pursuing a life of integrity.

Today’s excerpt is from the most recent novel: “How the Light Gets In” in which Armand is talking to his adult daughter about a relationship gone into difficulty. She is in love with a good man but there are problems. And drugs and alcohol are involved.

Armand says to Annie,

“I think you should try living your life as though it’s just you. If he comes back and you know your life will be better with him, then great. But you’ll also know you’re enough on your own.”

If only we had all learned that at 13 or 21 or 41 --or now.

Chief Inspector Gamache and Alcoholics Anonymous

I have written before about my favorite mystery series by Louise Penny featuring the wise and insightful Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. He is one of those characters so well developed that it’s hard for me to say that Penny “created” him. I prefer to think that she knows him well and is just sharing his stories with us.

I’ve just finished number five—“A Trick of the Light” and this book gave me a double delight. It features a look inside the business side of the art world—galleries and gallerists—and much to my surprise it’s a look into the world of AA as well.

Gamache has to solve a crime that involves AA members and so he is required to enter the recovery world and learn about AA meetings and especially AA relationships—and he reads the Big Book to grasp the thinking that informs people in Twelve-step recovery. How perfectly wild and wonderful to see my favorite sleuth figuring out the messages of AA.

If you haven’t discovered this wonderful mystery series by Louise Penny do give it a try and meet one of the wisest, most compassionate and cultured detectives on the page. Your local library or bookstore will have a list of the books in the order they were written.

PS: Earlier posts about the lessons I have learned from Chief Inspector Gamache: September 19, 2012 and October 22, 2012.

The Four Sentences That Lead to Wisdom

By now you know that I love the mystery novels by Louise Penny that feature the Quebecois Inspector, Armand Gamache. I think of him as a real person now and one of the most elegant and intelligent and psychologically minded teachers.

This week I'm reading "Bury Your Dead" in which Penny backtracks to give a little more history of her main man, Gamache and of Quebec and the politics of the French and English settlers.  And she allows Gamache to give some history of his career as a police investigator. In the context of this book Gamache reveals the questions he was given early in his career that shaped him and which he has tried to teach those who serve under him. It's this:

The four sentences that lead to wisdom:

1. I am sorry.
2. I was wrong.
3. I need help.
4. I don't know.

Four three word sentences. Four sentences that can save a job, save a relationship and that can make you wise.

Chief Inspector Gamache and the Near Enemies

I’m still reading the fabulous mystery series by Louise Penny that features Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. I love this guy—and I love the psychological lessons that Penny loads into these books. With each new volume I learn things that I can apply to my recovery and personal growth.

This week is it the concept of “Near Enemies”: a psychological framework in which two emotional states can look the same but are actually opposites. Near Enemies derives from a Buddhist teaching where a positive psychological state has a sort of, “evil twin”.  One parades as the other, and is mistaken for the other, but one is healthy and the other is sick.

Here are examples: Attachment can masquerade as Love; Pity as Compassion and Indifference as Equanimity.

We understand the first pair from codependency: Real love wants the other’s best interests; wants the other to grow, to go, to get on with life and to change; Love wants the other to be independent. But attachment clings, stifles, enables and cripples in the name of love.

The second pair is Compassion and Pity: Compassion involves empathy. You see the stricken person as an equal. Pity doesn’t. If you pity someone you feel superior to him or her.

And then the pair of Equanimity and Indifference. Louise Penny calls this the most corrosive pair. “Equanimity is balance. When something overwhelming happens in our lives we feel it but we also have the ability to overcome it. We might feel huge grief or sorrow, but deep down inside people find a core. That’s equanimity.” But, she goes on to explain, Indifference is stoicism, calm in a crisis without feeling, they don’t feel pain because they don’t care. People with equanimity can absorb a pain, feel it fully, and let it go. But they might look exactly like people who don’t care at all. “But who is really brave and who is the near enemy?”

If you are interested in The Louise Penny mystery series begin with the book, “Still Life” and go from there.

Wisdom from Chief Inspector Gamache

I am loving the Louise Penny mystery novels that my sister-in-law recommended. I'm on book number three now and the main character, the Quebecois Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, is this wise, literary, intuitive, challenging, elegant man who is all about what makes people tick--and of course, what makes people kill. These are murder mysteries after all.

He is quite quotable and here is today's take-away:  "We should have tattooed on the hand we use to shoot or write, 'I might be wrong.'"

It's another way of saying "restraint of tongue and pen" (and gun).

It's About Choices

My sister-in-law turned me onto a great series of detective fiction books by Canadian writer, Louise Penny. I am so hooked on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec—I think I may have a new addiction.

The particular joy of this character—and this author – is that the books are very psychological. It’s not about the CSI details of solving a crime but—and this is what I love—it’s about what makes human beings tick. That’s the thread of my life work: Why am I the way I am? Why are you? And why is he and she and them?

Early in the first book of the series, which is called, “Still Life” Inspector Gamache is explaining his work to a young apprentice. He says to her:

“I watch. I’m very good at observing. I listen to what people are saying and their choice of words, their tone. What they aren’t saying. And this is the key. It’s choice. We choose our thoughts. We choose our perceptions. We choose our attitudes. We may not think so. We may not believe it, but we do. It’s all about choice.”

And as they talk he continues:

“Life is choice. All day, everyday. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It’s as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. So when I’m observing, that’s what I’m watching for. The choices people make.”

Those paragraphs really stopped me. What are the choices of the people around me? What are my choices? Can I make new ones right here in this moment? And what life are my choices adding up to?