To live a happy life, you need to accept the reality.
While in pursuit of happiness and a happy life, we often forget about all the good things that are happening in our lives right now. We start to drift away from the reality to chase a fantasy and gradually forget to live. We suspend living and start to wait for a better tomorrow. When everything is happening according to our will, when we are completely in control of life. Once we realise that this tomorrow never arrives, we get frustrated and disappointed with life. This is because we have concluded that to live a happy life, such and such need to exist first.
One of the topics in my book talks about the art of letting go. There, I discuss that creating an image of an ideal life in our head, while is not necessarily a bad thing, pushes oneself further away from appreciating the present moment and often result in disappointment, anxiety and stress.
Wishful thinking…
This is mainly happening because of a total identification with mind. To understand this, we need to explore the nature of wishful thinking and human thoughts in more depth. Human thoughts are the accumulation of information through our five senses. In the same way which the human body is the accumulation of food over a long period. So wishful thinking is an exaggeration of a witnessed situation. Basically you concluded that a specific possession such as an expensive car or a large house etc, or a specific social class is the key to happiness.
This is an illusion created by an egocentric mind that refuses to come to terms with the reality of life. The illusion often rises because we want to be selective about our lives’ experiences and cannot really accept life for what it is.
Life is an extremely complex and mysterious event that cannot be analysed by our intellectual abilities. One needs to realise that we are here to experience life and not to control it. In fact, the only way to be in control, is to let go of the illusion. The illusion that life can be controlled by excessive thinking and worrying about every little thing.
Stop worrying and accept life for what it is…
Unfortunately, there is a set belief, in which we’ve concluded that if we don’t worry enough on a daily basis about our life’s direction and lose sleep over it, we are heading for failure. This is the exact opposite of truth.
Happiness is accepting the reality, where we decide to accept life fully with all its challenges. It is the ability to appreciate everything that already exist in our lives. One needs to stop chasing what they think is going to make them happy.
By being selective about our life experiences, one is basically refusing to accept the fundamentals of life. You see, what most fail to realise, is the concept of duality. Duality is the fact that every event in life can be looked at from two different perspective. A negative one and a positive one. These two seemingly contradictory concepts are both equally essential for the event to exist and cannot be separated.
As an example, consider two opposite directions. “Up and Down” – if we attempt to exclude one of them, the whole concept vanishes simultaneously. If there is no “Up” there can’t be a “Down” either. Similarly for a happy moment to exist, a sad moment need to exist. What seems to be opposite and contradictory, are actually the two poles of the same event. Two sides of the same coin.
Chasing a dream, is chasing an illusion…
Once you realise that, you can come to terms with the reality of life and accept life for what is. So chasing a dream is basically chasing an illusion which will never come to existence. The sooner you let go of this illusion, the better. Allow life to define what you are here to do so you can enjoy every event fully. Being it a positive experience or one that you dislike, both are essential for the existence as a whole to make sense.
To fully understand the subject, please read my book where it has been discussed in more depth.
