So. There you are. You’ve done it! First of all: you were born! You’ve graduated! You’ve got the job! You found your love! You’ve got the car and the house! And now you’re married, you’ve got children! You’ve got the shoes, the watch and the friends to show it to! Hell, maybe you’ve got it all! Well, no. You can’t have it all, I mean: where would you put it? My point is: whatever you have, the moment you first got it created an amazing feeling. But with time the intensity of every feeling, even the good ones, will gradually fade. Daily life takes your attention away from what was once pride, gratefulness and happiness. So there you are again. Same situation, only now the question is: now what? You have what you wanted, but that’s not enough is it? No. Because it isn’t about having what you want, it’s about wanting what you have. Or else you’ll always be chasing for happiness the rest of your life, without ever really being happy.
In his book ‘The Trouble With Being Born’, philosopher Emil Cioran said: “Man is a robot with defects”. Now despite it’s great title, I didn’t read the book, yet I agree with what he says. Many of our daily routines make us act like robots, and most certainly we all have defects (nobody is flawless). But now it gets interesting: science says that 95% of the time our unconscious mind is running us on its automatic pilot mode. What that means? Well, let’s begin with defining the unconscious mind. Wikipedia says: “(…) the unconscious is all the processes of the mind which are not available to consciousness. (…) Unconscious phenomena have been held to include repressed feelings, automatic skills, unacknowledged perceptions, thoughts, habits and automatic reactions, complexes, hidden phobias and desires. So… whilst we think we control our mind, in reality our mind controls us. As Sigmund Freud put it: “The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of unconscious from which it rises”. To me being still is the answer. Sink away to the deeper levels of yourself, let your feelings speak, use your intuition to guide you. In order to make room for feelings and intuition, learn to be still before your thoughts starts yelling they have it all under control. Because they haven’t. Meditation is a great way to practice in quieting your thoughts. It helps you to make room, to be one with the rhythm of your breath and enter the deepest source of wisdom that lies within you, waiting for you to find and use it.
Apart from my own (pretty strange) truth, I don’t know what the truth is. Fortunately Albert Einstein had an idea about the truth. He said: “Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters, cannot be trusted in large ones either”. To me his saying means something like: “When you contemplate the greatness of life, you mustn’t forget about the tiniest details”. And besides my own truth, I also have my own (pretty strange) fiction – imagination, dreams, wishful thinking. It runs wild at times, it is sometimes of great help and sometimes it’s diluting me. But what fiction really is… Luckily Oscar Wilde had an idea fiction. He said: “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means”. Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it: “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures”. I guess in the end, both truth and fiction are strange. Strange things happen in reality, strange fictional thoughts come to mind. My answer to this: play with reality, play with fiction.
The way you think about things, the way you view things, the way you interpret things, the way you feel about things, a single world: this way or that way, it can make a world of difference. It sounds so simple and in fact it is. Denis Waitley, a motivational speaker and author said: “If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you can’t, you most assuredly can’t. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.” To master the art of switching, challenge every thought, feeling or idea you have. It gives you freedom to create, shape and endlessly alter reality. Your reality, your life.
Often described a the place to be, living in the ‘here and now’ is a much talked about thing. And it sure sounds nice, but where the hell is it!? How do you live ‘in’ it? Did you ever find yourself more or less asking that question? Well, I did many times and I still do every now and then, usually in a moment of frustration. But the harder I search for it, the more difficult it is to find it. Until of course I realize the ‘here and now’ can’t be searched for. Simply because it is not there and then, it’s already: here, now. So then I stop biting the steel. I take a deep breath, stop searching and… start finding.
Everybody has ups and downs in life, it’s a common experience. Yet you experience the ups and downs in your own life rarely as ‘just’ ups and downs. They are: The Incredible Ups & Downs in the Great Life of You! After all they concern you, they matter, they mean something, they make an impact. But no matter how big or small the deal is, no matter how good or bad they make you feel, ultimately all ups and downs have one and the same characteristic: they all pass. So take it easy. As the director of your life, you can always choose a different camera angle or cut to the next scene.
Some time ago a friend of mine posted a lovely self-made phrase on her Facebook wall. She said: “Dear Sun, I know you are there. Now stop hiding”. I loved it. It reminded me of this feeling of searching for something but not finding it. You know it’s there, but you just don’t see it. Quite frustrating right? And so you start searching for it even harder, but as a result of that you create a tunnel vision making it only harder to find it while making you feel worse. So instead of doing that, step back for a moment and simply ask kindly: “Dear Sun (or whatever it is you’re looking for) I know you are there, now stop hiding”. You will move from a tunnel vision to a 360 vision and as you open up you become more peaceful, creating a space to sooner or later find what you’re looking for.
