Reality Check

Every so often the unexpected happens and the emotional trigger is pulled - ouch!!! That hurts. I don't like that feeling. It's disconcerting and once the defensive reactions have taken place and the dust has settled the reality check occurs and in truth the stuff that I need to face is not so much out there as in here. That is where I find myself today. Wondering what it is I need to do in response to an ouch moment.

I know I will die (in fact life is a series of many deaths, mainly to the ego), I just don’t know how and when. I could live the rest of my life with the sense of making the most of this experience available to me without fear of not knowing the outcome, because in reality the outcome is known. Yet I sense I live in a world where I have been socially conditioned to push the idea and thoughts of death to one-side, to deny its existence and to subconsciously fear death, or even to consciously fear death. Many of the activities and actions in my culture are designed to overcome, defeat, prevent, push back and look away from the inevitability of death – and I wonder why this is so? And would it not be more liberating and rewarding to place our attention on life and living, whilst holding lightly and reverently the ultimate mystery. Maybe others do that and this is more a reflection of my own thoughts and experiences.

And rather than look for the degeneration, labelling it a mistake or a failure, and attempting to 'fix it' maybe it would serve life and death more to seek out the regenerative qualities, the positive, life-enhancing and uplifting experience. Suffering will find me I don’t need to go looking for it. The ouch moment of last night is a reminder of that. And maybe I am conflating death and suffering! They need not be one and the same.

Happiness is my responsibility, a sensation I can nourish and nurture, not with the intention of creating its permanence but with the knowledge that it is where my heart seeks to reside.

Ironically I find myself in a situation where my happiness is contingent on doing something that makes me unhappy. Unless I can find a way to change my perspective on what make me unhappy ... how do I do this? Or is this dichotomy telling me something? I have no idea. Confusion reigns the day. For now all I can do is allow the river of life to flow and time to pass. As the famous Beatles song says, 'Let It Be'.