On Life:
Being in resistance to ‘what is’fighting gravity all the way downis what makes life brutally demanding. Life is naturally much easier than we make it. Trees grow, flowers bloom, birds fly, sloths don’t seem to do a hell of a lot, and I assume that platypuses do platypussy things all without resistance to what is. All species are designed to live that way without resistance. Except humans. We complicate things and make life hard for ourselves by resisting life as it is. We try to change things over which we have no control. We want gravity to be different, for the immutable rules that govern our existence to somehow be suspended for us.
When you boil it down, life is made up of our minute-to-minute experiences. And once we begin to become more aware, at some point we discover a fundamental truth life is not positive or negative, it just is.
Choosing to live an extraordinary life is simple. This does not, however, mean that it is easy.
Everything we enjoy in society is a direct result of the accumulated learning derived from millions of mistakes. No mistakes, no progress. Yet we still look at making a mistake as embarrassing, wrong, an act bordering on sin. If youre making mistakes, it means youre doing new things, taking risks, stretching yourself. Youre growing, learning. And isn’t the journey, the experience, not the destination, what life is all about
. if we accept the reality that life is difficult, demanding and often painful, then the day-to-day living of it is no longer so onerous. In accepting life as it really is, we transcend it. Or, as they say on Wall Street, The market has already discounted the bad news.
On Happiness:
If happiness is the only prize we seek in life, then we will be guaranteed to spend a good part of our lives deep in disappointment, focused on a very small prize indeed.