There’s a lot of clever language and programming out there that keeps us spinning around and dazed, frustrated, directionless and at odds with ourselves and each other.
You’ve heard that “everyone has the potential for greatness” or something along those lines. I’ve written about it before, myself.
You’ve heard that we are all born with innate gifts and talents and abilities — dormant or evident, developed or hidden — and all we need to do is connect with our truth, to follow our passion, or our bliss, and life will be a magical flow of chocolate highways and marshmallow pillows while we rest.
The trap is that underneath most all of this spiritual and new-age double-speak is the idea of needing something more; that you’re lacking something, not perceiving something, not understanding yourself, not knowing your calling or your truth, and that if you aren’t doing, pursuing, producing or improving, you’re basically waiting around to die.
This is the mechanistic view of life that the consumerist, commercial, industrial and corporate perspectives of reality thrive within. It keeps us, as our natural human selves, perpetually exhausted, exasperated, strung out, edgy, searching, unfulfilled, chasing and chasing and chasing the ephemeral, unattainable “more” in everything — or seeing first and foremost the “not enough” in what is here, right now.
As a consequence, we become quick to discount and dismiss the magic of the seemingly ordinary. We prejudge and distrust everyone. We disregard the little moments and big events cloaked in the everyday. We ignore too easily the remarkable and authentic because it isn’t wearing the clothes of an ideal.
The volatility of the market economy isn’t doing us any favors, either. There is no job security. Trends shift with the wind, fiat currency is consistently devalued, and the dreams of our elders were always somewhat of a superficial farce.
It’s how you perceive things and choose to define what’s happening.
More and more people are succeeding at pursuing their genuine interests, using and developing and adapting their natural abilities — or some variation that becomes marketable and/or profitable — while more and many others are terrified of that same prospect; it still requires a basic, yet violent conforming to a very limited set of parameters in order to “earn a living” regardless of the path chosen.
It comes down to the most simple of things: what do you really want, now? WHY?
It’s also that “shit sandwich” that Mark Manson talks about, and deciding, in the ever pregnant moment, most brutally and honestly, what you truly desire for all aspects of your life — and what you’re willing and ready (or not) to be and do to have it.
And then, surrender; surrender to the goals and all they entail; surrender to embarrassment and taking chances in business, career, and romance… And surrender by letting go of the struggle and suffering and trials of chasing only what someone else chased before you — successfully or not.
Get to know the real you. It’s more important than ever.
. . .
We live in a very noisy reality. Most of it is total bullshit, so check yourself, and remember to be kind to yourself and others, above all else. There are age-old control structures that are messing with your mind and sapping your mojo at every turn.
Distortions can easily keep our love and our happiness at bay, so step back more often than not and reacquire your authentic perspective. Fear, defensiveness, paranoia, pain and hate are not virtues of sovereign, divine creator beings! That’s just what’s been beaten into us over countless millennia, in both our waking and sleeping states. It helps not to take any of this too seriously.
Look again.
Solvitur ambulando