The Road Not Taken

I have decided to re-open my blog. Even though I am not “on the road” literally, I am still on the road figuratively. I may not be sitting in a beaten up old volkswagen van crossing the Andes but I am doing a similar journey in my mind on a daily basis.

We all do really. From the moment we wake up in the morning and shrug off the faint ghosts of our dreams our mind goes into action. We start thinking. Now thinking is what makes us do what we do and behave like we do. Our thoughts then control our daily lives. But we are not incontrol of our thoughts. If we were then we would be able to control our emotions at any given time.

For example. When someone cuts you up in their car you react. As a consequence of what happens you may shout and scream at the other person. You get to work and the first thing you do is moan to someone about the asshole who cut you up. Why? Because it makes you feel better? Perhaps it does but that is an illusion. You don’t really feel better. You would feel better if you immediately controlled your reaction after the event and then….dismissed it. Forget it ever happened. But you can’t forget it, I hear you say. Why not? The event has happened and now is just a memory. A recent one but a memory nonetheless. It is in the past. It now does not exist. Yet you keep it alive. For what purpose? To enable you to get angry and then relay the tale to someone who will agree that the road is full of assholes?

This is one of thousands upon thousands of ways in which we pretend we are controlling our lives but we are in fact controlled by our thoughts which are nothing but a construction of patterned thoughts our mind uses to play out the role of who we think we are.

Ask someone who they think they are and they will tell you about themselves, how they went to college and what they studied, where they worked, who they have married etc. That is not who they are, it is what they have done.

Of course all this philosophical babbling is ok in theory you may say but we have to live our lives, work for a living, fit in with the way the world works and do the best we can to be happy. If you really believe that happiness can be found through money, fame, things or even another person then you will never “find” happiness. Happiness is a state of being. It can be found immediately by dropping the act. Stop playing the role of who you think you are. Only the moment exists. The past and future do not. Choose to “be” happy at this moment and you are. Dreaming of being happy when you have more money or when you have met your soul mate or when you have a baby will not do it. Those are all ephemeral. As is life. We all die. So be happy now.

If you have any interest at all in what you have just read then I suggest reading “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle.