Someday Everything will be Different

without the chase for happiness where do we turn? if there is no hope of a better future why shall we even bother with the future? there is no reason to work long hours improving society if improvement itself is not a guaranteed outcome. why should anyone invest their energy in something that does not yield results? it would be pointless, we say, or at least so goes the current dogma of values currently immersing us. it seems survival in and of itself is not rewarding enough. mere subsistence is a lesser life, unlived, unfulfilled, tainted by boredom. the challenge of being alive is to keep oneself entertained. if one is not constantly amused, pleasured or made content there is something wrong. it is a failure to reach one's highest potential. the highest ideal is to maintain a lasting feeling of satisfaction. whoever has achieved this has mastered life. life in this perspective is a candy store. you open the door and see all the varieties of sweets spread out before you. all you have to do is simply reach out and grab what you want.

there is one problem however. though the metaphor of the candy store is apt and delightfully true, the visitors to the candy store become addictive, neurotic, dysfunctional people. they soon grow tired of the selection and demand greater variety and more intense pleasure. the candy-man can't keep up. any amount of candy-improvement won't do the trick. all his customers expect the new high to be even higher than the old one. and so it goes. the customers all settle into a constant opportunistic pleasure-hunt. their lives become monotonous and the candy looses more and more of its original sweetness.

i think what our current value-system is missing is a balanced appreciation for the negative aspects of life. loneliness, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, worthlessness, inadequacy and spiritual emptiness all build character. they harden and strengthen the soul. they polish the self with a protective layer shielding it from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". what happens when we chase the positive to hard is that we loose the opposite pole, the negative, and become unstable Selves. a Self that is comfortable with suffering is a core so dense it can withstand the inevitable pains of being alive. the Self that is whole is also dual, two-fold. it is good and evil, pleasure and pain, love and fear. it integrates the aspects the unwhole Self disavows and brings unity where there once was fragmentation. the unwhole Self is full of orphaned children. all the parts of itself that it feared or disliked it banished to oblivion.  just like the modern Self has done with boredom and emptiness. they are not allowed in the perfect realm of the mind ruled by the biased Self. the biased Self does not see its own shortcomings or its lack of wholeness. it is like a drunkard refusing to accept there is no alcohol left. the biased Self only wants to soar higher and higher, surfing on the eternal rising wave of increased self-confidence, self-image, social influence and personal charisma. its on a power-trip headed for eternity and of course it inevitably crashes, and when it does, it crashes hard.

the positive and negative never go anywhere without each other. if we only embrace the positive soon enough the negative will make an unexpected appearance. the negative hates being abandoned and this time it shows up with more force and power than ever. we may at this point choose to close our eyes and go deeper into hiding but the more we flee the more power we grant the monster.

perhaps there are no monsters. maybe there is no darkness. maybe there are just places we are reluctant to explore.