Willie
Nelson: “We create our own unhappiness. The purpose of suffering is to help us
understand we are the ones who cause it.”
Whole lot
of unhappiness is born of comparing your situation to others. It's your
short-cut to instant unhappiness. By instinct we compare ourselves to those better
off while overlooking millions of unfortunates.
Dostoevsky:
“The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”
Unhappiness
is the state of forgetting primarily yourself for what you are. We simply allow
unhappiness to sink over us. It's a symptom of self-loathing instead of what
others have done to you.
Marcus
Brigstocke: “I realized that to compare your insides with other people's
outsides leads to unhappiness.”
You must
be feeling that all the preachy talk lays too much emphasis on how to be happy.
Well then, we take a bit different route. We can achieve better results by
handling unhappiness.
Enjoy being the frog king in a
shit hole; it's better than being a slave in heaven. It directly cuts on the
pool of unhappiness, brightening your chances of loving primarily yourself and
loving all as a consequence. It’s all the more important because unhappiness
straightaway stabs at your intrinsic loving nature. The challenge here is to
stab unhappiness in a nonviolent way. There is a methodology.
Apart from all the
shit happening around, life is supposed to be a big, fat and interesting book.
Let it be an exciting story, not because others applaud it, but basically
because you own it, write it and enjoy it. Don't die every moment to see
appreciation in the eyes of those around. If that is the expectation, then
forget it. It won't happen. People around you will give you more reasons to be
sad rather be happy. Others will prefer to see your miserable face instead of
ever-grinning, full of joy joker. Not because they are sadistic in nature, just
that it helps them in somehow digesting their own miseries. So at least don't
hold any expectation on that front.
The appreciation
has to come basically from within you. So let it be a very fat book of your
follies and little, little triumphs. Let there be unending trails of anecdotes
that make you the champion of your small world. Forget about being a
world champion. This world is as small as you in comparison to the cosmos. Both
are puny. Laugh at it, if it laughs at you. Quite interestingly, this world has
limitations, but not you. There are no limitations on you to extend the world
within, inside your smallness of routine life, tiny errands, short walks,
little losses, tiny gains and stable-unstable relations.
Live more. Like a
frog that just jumped into the murky, muddy, mossy green puddle of water. This
little puddle itself won't be there after a week. Summers are unsparing. It's
boiling. But does it stop the frog king from walloping and taking fantastic
breaststrokes in the filthy water? Does it stop the love-lorn fella from croaking
dandily and woo the lady of its dream? It doesn't because it's just living in a
lifeful 'consciousness', not 'self-consciousness' like we humans who impose
'self' on natural 'consciousness' so heavily to make life a burden.
'Ego' is the
feeling of 'I am'. 'I' overshadows 'am', the state of 'just being', of
'consciousness', of living fully, of gliding in the present without the
burden of past and worries of future. Nurture 'am-ness'. Water it. It will
prosper. Consciousness will spread healthily as you nurture am-ness. Unburden the
enjoyment of life from the heavyweight of 'I' and woo your mistress, the life,
even in the dirtiest waters like the king of the puddle, the frog. Just
'be'.
Write more chapters
in the book of your life. Not as 'I' but by 'being' there. More the chapters,
the better it is! Don't bother if these are just scribbled with amateur
verve. It's your creation, and as a parent you will hardly be
judgmental about it. If a particular chapter goes stale, wind it up
and save your book from getting boring. Start a new chapter. We are the writers
of the book of life. Keep it interesting!
Life turns
interesting, not because there are exciting things around. It’s interesting if
you ‘find’ it interesting. The stage is lying neutral for anyone around. How
you see it and how you decide to jump on it with your own antics, playing the
protagonist of your life, is all that matters.
Comparison: The Enemy of your Loving Self
A lot many
of us are unhappy—and naturally less loving—because of the perpetual feeling of
loss and failure. Well, a lot of it has to do with our comparison of our
situation and standing with others instead of the actual placement of things.
Looking at the brighter suns, we get blinded and go into low self-esteem and
self-reproach. It makes us terribly discontented and unhappy. To make it still
scarier, it’s the worst diagnosis for one’s loving self.
Lyanla
Vanzant: “Comparison is an act of violence against the self.”
We have
this terrible propensity to add to the weight of sadness and pain inside us.
And the simplest mode of adding to our woes is unnecessarily comparing us to
others. By prioritizing comparison over your uninfluenced action, you surrender
a part of your free will. It is a vital resource. You just jab your own
confidence by bruising your self-love. A detached attitude gives you freedom.
Comparison basically is a bug that sickens your spirits. Long before you beat
others, you berate your own self. You get into sickened imaginations and enter
a whirlpool of impracticality.
Comparison
is the most irksome short-cut to unhappiness. Almost 90% of the time, we are
comparing ourselves with people better placed than us. No wonder a crippling
feeling of inadequacy sinks in. Under the glorious sun of their hyper-achievement,
you writhe with your somewhat real, but majority of imagined, inadequacies.
Well, the
imperious combo of compare and compete beats the hell out of our compassionate
self. I am not saying don't compete. Do it with all your capability. But remove
the indoctrinated vice of comparison from it. All we can do is to compare our
former self with the present one to see the degree of change. Be your own
comparison.
Gerald
Jampolsky: “Love is the total absence of fear. Love asks no questions. Its
natural state is one of extension and expansion, not comparison and
measurement.”
So walk slowly, look within, and
reach your goal with a smile; you will beat the fastest runner. Qualitatively I
mean, since walking to the goal-post with a lovely smile and loadful of loving
self makes you the real winner. We just need to change the evaluation of
victory. The system may take a generation to bring out such qualitative changes;
meanwhile, we can begin with the self.
The moment
you grasp the meaning and purpose of your life, you become indispensable for
the scheme of things around. You become a requirement for this whole universe.
You are no longer a burden for this cosmos to drag on. You just don’t survive
accidentally. Yours becomes a planned journey, shaping and reshaping the
environment not just for meeting your end, but also carrying the effects that
go onto touch many lives around.
The sea
cannot survive without its tiny drop. Suppose a drop goes missing, the sea gets
a hole in its heart and it just cannot afford to miss its drop. Similarly, this
universe cannot sustain the hole left by you. It sustains by you as much as you
sustain by it. The only condition being that you live consciously, that you
know what you are doing, that you pick an option only after deliberating over
it. In this manner you bring full justice to your consciousness.
From
chance living to well-meant steps purposeful for the self and the larger
humanity, all it takes is a small realization. Just look back and see the trail
of decisions you have taken in life. How many of these were taken consciously,
you being fully aware of the range of options? How many of these were just
pushed on you by the random happenings and chance occurrences?
Unfortunately,
a vast majority of our options are born of random throws by chance factors and
we just grabbing some involuntarily. And a life dictated by uncalculated,
random options and opportunities, hits and mis-hits ends in a confusing travel
across the endless twists, turns, U-turns and back outs from dead ended streets
like in the puzzle game. We get wasted and wearied in endless turns, re-turns
and U-turns, always pushed on by the random factors that happen to spin out of
the lot. No wonder, even after travelling a whole lifetime, we are still near the
point of start. We feel we haven’t done anything at all. It’s the puzzling
zigzag. It cannot be called a path leading to your destiny.
Across the
serpentine criss-crossing and entangled turns of random paths and choices, there
are most suitable paths laid out for all of us. All we need to do is to start
living consciously. Don’t allow generalizations drawn out of comparison of your
situation with others to be your guiding principle. Walk slowly but mindfully.
You may see others hurtling fast on the racetrack around you, raising dust,
crashing into sidelines, shouting with trophies at some corners, but mind you,
no journey is complete and meaningful if one doesn’t feel contentment at the
end. No journey across the blizzard of accidental turns can result in peace
that you are looking for at the end of the day.
So plan
your journey even if it means walking slowly. You can even delay your onslaught
on the exams or other important tasks of life by a year if you decide to go
into self reflection, weighing your abilities and limitations, all this while
keeping a close look at the competition. It’s better to watch from a distance
first. It’s better to walk slowly if you know what you are doing.
Mindless
dash towards the finish line has no meaning at all. Stop if you have been
running. Pause if you have been mindlessly allowing yourself to be held by the
collar by the monster called life. Sit down if you have been standing for too
long. And then look around and think. Look at the zigzag pattern of your senseless
run so far. The actual distance covered will surely be very short.
Walk
slowly like a wise man. A wise man walking slowly will still beat a reckless
sprinter at the end of the day. It’s better to walk slowly to the finish-line,
with your breath still under control, your legs still able to carry you. The
end becomes meaningful, preparing you for the next journey. Running out of
breath to the end line, and crashing straightaway has no meaning. This is no
victory. This is not the destination. It’s not meeting the goal. It simply
means collapsing. The whole journey turns meaningless.
Victory
means being able to smile after reaching the destination. So stop, look back,
see the mindless work and the stampede, pause for a moment, look ahead and walk
to your sweet goal with a smile on your lips. You become a winner instantly.
