Erase the 'Us' and 'Them'

Amongst the things which are a root cause for suffering and unhappiness is the ‘should’ condition. We suffer from the ‘should’ condition when we adopt limited and narrow views on how things should be done, what should be liked, what should be disliked. This condition isolates us from those around us. It turns judging others into a natural reflex, the first resort we go to when we are identifying or labeling a person. The ‘should’ condition hands us a black pencil and makes us start drawing lines on a white canvas, creating clear boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. 
There’s no surprise that in opposition, what the Buddhists treasure, what yoga was based upon, what other schools of mysticism praise is ‘unity’. There’s a meditation technique you can practice with your eyes open. The idea is that you adopt a visual field as wide as possible, without focusing on anything in particular. When you do that, you realize that everything in front of your eyes is colours that dance together upon your sight. The tree, the chair, the flower, those are separate objects because we have decided to identify them and isolate one from another. When you look at what stands in front of you as a whole, you see unity of shades, comprising everything around us. 
A lot of people who come to Bali with bold ambitions of creating something of their own, often suffer  as they bring their ‘should’ mentality on how everything must be executed. They don’t bother to first understand the island mentality, the means and ways of the locals, to then be able to navigate their boat amongst the winds. 
I met a guy once at the ice plunge of the Spa center, I often visit after a tough workout. As much as I do not want to give him this title, I think he’s the unhappiest man I’ve ever met in Bali. He had a business of operating a number of villas in the area. Without even asking about my name, he dove deep into stories of him being cheated by the local people. ‘They have no morals when it comes to money. They’d do anything to get them.’
This statement threw me off-it was my second week in Bali and I didn’t know enough to know whether that was true or not. I decided to make my own conclusion. The man who told me about his painful experiences of being screwed over by landlords and banjars (the local authority) had a very strict idea of how business ‘should’ be done. He put the locals in a whole separate category, yet he believed that they should be following his way of thinking and doing. He took them for less intelligent, lazy and careless, yet expected them to perform to the standards he was used to when living back in England, whilst paying them a 10 times lower salary. His expectations were paved with contradictions.
When I got out of the ice plunge, I quickly jumped in the shower, rubbing off the negativity as much as I could, and setting it as a little mission of my own, to observe closely how the locals act, how they work, how their morals are. 
This man had drawn such a bold line in between himself and the island people. They were different, they were cheaters, they could never perform up to his standard. 
After spending one year and a half on the island, I beg to differ.The people here have souls, they enjoy life. Often, you offer them more and they don’t want it- they are good with what they have, with how much they do. 
A lot of people coming here and offering positions to Indonesian people are baffled when they offer people more money for more work and they turn that down.The people here are content with the amounts of hours they put in, with the money they bring back and with the free time they get to spend chatting over nasi goreng (fried rice) with family and friends or flying huge kites on the beach during sunset. To work with the locals, you need to put your ‘shoulds’ aside and peek into their values, their day-to-day, the things they hold most dearly.
Are they just like ‘us’? They are the happier version of us. There’s a philosopher living in each of them, who has figured out a way to joy and laughter in every day of their being. 
P.S. Special gratitude to the guard of the swimming pool, who returned my phone to me after I had forgotten it in the outside pocket of my scooter for over an hour. I have met nothing but honesty, candor and generosity from the local Balinese people who have crossed my way.