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REALITY CHECK

8/20/2011

8 Comments

 
Embracing life in all its messy glory can lead to an abiding sense of happiness.

Why don’t my children listen to me?  Why don’t people return my phone calls?  Why did it have to rain on my wedding day? 

Why are my coworkers so lazy? Why do people cheat on their spouses?  Why can't politicians tell the truth?

Reality baffles us.  We question it every day. 

We keep waiting for people to be good, for governments to be just, for life to be fair.

What we really want is for reality to be fantasy, for it to live up to our lofty expectations.  With one foot planted in reality and the other in a dream world, our lives are rooted in compromise.  Life is a chore, a problem to be solved.  It is often painful, and sometimes dreadfully so.

Resigned to this suffering, we find ways to justify it.  We decide that suffering is good, even noble.  A sign of virtue.  This saintly rationalization deadens the pain, but only briefly.  Soon we are wondering why our marriages aren’t happier, why our children aren’t saying no to drugs, and why a collapsing stock market sucked our savings dry.

What is it that we don’t have right?  What is it we never learned about reality – life as it is – that makes us so newly frazzled by it every day?  Did we sleep through the philosophy class that taught us how to appreciate it?  Or the psychology class that taught us how to adapt to it?

Or maybe it was a science class we slept through.

14 billion years ago nothingness exploded into something and, following a succession of progressively conscious life forms, that something included us.  We human beings are but a single expression of life in a vast, intimately connected universe.

Or so the story goes.  Clearly we’re not buying it.  Somewhere along the line we decided that being a bit player in a tediously long evolutionary story didn’t suit our ambitions.   We wanted to be masters of the universe.  Screw evolution, it was time for us to jump the track and take control of our destinies.  

Soon, our upright gait acquired a certain swagger.  Life wasn’t about natural law, it was about attitude.  From our new vantage point at the center of the universe, we had a much better idea of how life should be proceeding – our way.  If we wanted something badly enough, we could make it happen.  The way they do in Nike commercials.  You just have to be willing to work up a sweat.

Our attempt to subvert the will of a smoothly functioning universe had its downside, however.  It put us on a collision course with suffering.  When our Nike version of reality meets the real thing, it’s no contest.  We lose every time.  And when we lose we suffer, no matter how much we sweat.

To believe we control the movement of life is to believe we are driving a bus on which we are merely passengers.  We feel as if we are in control when the bus takes us where we want to go, but when it keeps chugging merrily on its way despite our attempts to turn or stop or slow down, we are incredulous.  We grip the frozen steering wheel and stare helplessly out the windows muttering that teenagers shouldn’t be having babies, corporations shouldn’t be exploiting legal loopholes for profit, and a cure for cancer should have been discovered by now. 

Life asks many things of us, but suffering for our delusions isn’t one of them.  The biggest delusion is that life should unfold in ways that make us happy.  Since we weren’t even around when life began, our happiness could hardly have been a bullet point in its mission statement.  Finding happiness is our job, and there’s more of it to be found when we meet life with open arms rather than with a fistful of angry questions.

John Ptacek



8 Comments
Arz Sra link
10/11/2011 12:30:57 am

"Fistful of angry questions" and a List-full of demands.

Great post again.

You always leave me a bit spellbound.

Thanks

Reply
madhumita
10/16/2011 10:06:18 pm

Spellbound! Hmm............ I feel this heady, lifting, drifting sort of feeling. For the moment, I feel free and flowing.

Reply
Robin
2/8/2012 09:04:11 am

It's a bit hard to embrace something when you don't understand it. I'm 34, and life is just as confusing now as when I was 10. I don't know how to find happiness when the world is so bewildering and nothing makes sense. How <b>do</b> you meet life with open arms? What is involved? If this is a stupid question, then I apologize in advance.

Reply
Cody
3/12/2012 11:12:56 am

Take one day at a time and suck up as much beauty and enjoyment as you can everyday. Try not focusing on the end result and enjoy journey...the journey is the reality. A great man once told me, "look at every situation, happening and outcome that occurs in your life as if you chose it." Force yourself to see the happiness and positivity in each moment and you will begin meeting life with open arms. It's going to take work, but every second you have is a chance to make that happen. It's been working for me...slowly but surely. Just by asking the question you asked, you are on the right path. Keep on going and embrace the flashes of consciousness you begin to encounter.

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Dylan
10/30/2012 12:33:45 pm

I agree with your general thesis that happiness is our job and that we must embrace life for what it is, rather than complaining that we are not living in a fantasy world. However, in your essay you seem to be making a case for settling for the status quo, and against fighting for social justice because we are mere passengers on a bus. When you make the comparison of gripping a frozen wheel and staring helplessly out windows, you don’t account for the progress in social justice humanity has made. The end of slavery, women’s rights, civil rights, etc. are not a product of a “smoothly functioning universe”, but a product of people dedicating their lives to a cause. I’m not condoning those who stew in their own “fistful of angry questions”, but I believe there is something to fighting for a better tomorrow. Your thesis holds true for much of life and I find your advice enlightening, however, I find fault in not addressing the obvious progression of humanity due to deliberate acts to change the status quo.

Reply
john ptacek
10/31/2012 10:07:40 am

Hi Dylan, thanks for offering your opinion.

It is my opinion that "people dedicating their lives to a cause" is a story, not a fact. Life happens through us, not because of us. We do not control our actions, not one. There is no "me" apart from my brain, no controller, no separate entity calling the shots. This is pure illusion. There is just the brain reacting to its environment. Things happen as the result of universal forces. How could this not be the case?

Reply
Pure
10/25/2014 05:40:07 pm

We have a brain, and a body that is manifested through the spiritual realm of infinite light (GOD) We are born into a TIME (1995 for me) and then all of a sudden we have these things we need to learn, maths, english, history, science all so that we can leave the prison of school and help create money. I have been wondering WHY. I look down at my hands and feet, what do you know ??? I can move them. This in itself is a miracle. I have a inner radio presenter that is telling myself to believe that the way I look is who i am. I am limited by reality. I am 19, why do i feel this way ?? I wish i was niave :(

Reply
John Ptacek
10/29/2014 09:51:19 pm

Pure, perhaps the part of you that is aware of the inner radio presenter is worthy of your attention. The presenter's voices comes and goes, but the awareness of that voice is immovable.

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