The path to living with ease is muddled with extreme practices.
On the one end you have hedonism where pleasure is at the center of your lifestyle.
Hedonism is essentially a way to self-soothe.
Think about it, you use food, drugs, distractions such as social media, and even meditation to run away from painful experiences.
Call it what you may, but this way of life of constantly running after pleasures will not end your pain and suffering.
It’ll turn you into a hamster who runs in a wheel trying to always catch the next big pleasure experience.
On the other extreme, there is a method of self-affliction where you attack your own desires.
Desire is a bottomless pit. No matter how much you feed it, you will not be content.
So the issue is with desire, you desire less or try to train yourself to be content with what you have.
Both of these methods, with all the variations you could think of, come from a position to be happy.
Or they come form an insight that not everything is okay with you or the world as it is and therefore something needs to change for it to be so, okay that is.
Add in happy if you want.
But what if, what if, neither of the paths will get you what you want?
There’s another way.
And that is, to train yourself to be not attached to either pleasure or pain (yes, some ppl love pain - read victimhood, self-pitying)
To train yourself to be with whatever is and enjoy the good as long as it lasts and to not try to soothe pain when it appears.
But in a non-attached way try to simply be in the moment and explore yourself, your emotions, your thoughts, as you take agency and act in the world.
I am working on my own business for example and self-doubt, limiting beliefs, anxiety shows up.
My programming is to do something else to get rid of the discomfort.
For me this has historically meant to eat, to run, to do anything to distract me from the discomfort the emotions trigger in me.
Instead, I’m learning to be with whatever is.
To be curious about what shows up, to simply note what I discover.
To explore what I truly like and dislike and what I want to contribute to this world.
To accept that this is a life-long journey and a way of life rather than a constant.
I don’t expect to know everything, I don’t expect to be able to control any outcomes, I don’t expect to find any ONE THING that will fill me for the rest of my life.
Instead, I recognize that everything changes, emotions, thoughts, relationships, what I like and dislike.
Knowing this, I have little hope to control anything really and accept that life is truly uncertain.
May I even propose that the most important life lesson could be to learn how to live with uncertainty.
There are many newsletter out there I could recommend that have added to my own understanding and reflection. Here are some: