What attracts you to other people?
In reality life involves pain
Happiness, we all want it, we all crave it, we all strive for it...but what is this elusive thing we are looking for?
A sense of pleasure, gladness or gratification, that doesn't last?
The harder we pursue pleasurable feelings the more likely we suffer from anxiety and depression.
What does it mean to live a rich, full and meaningful life?
Does it mean take action to cherish the things that truly matter deep in our hearts?
Does it mean to move in directions that we consider worthy?
Does it mean to clarify what we stand for in life and act accordingly?
It is a profound sense of a life well lived and such a life give us the full range of human emotions: pleasure, fear, sadness, anger and pain...
As human beings we are all faced with the prospect of getting sick and die, sooner or later we all will loose someone close to our hearts through separation, rejection or death...
We wil all come face-to-face with crisis, disappointment, failure and painful thoughts and feelings will follow us....everywhere...
We can't avoid pain, we can learn to handle it much better...
to make room for it, rise above it and create a life worth of living.
If you love somebody deeply, you know you will feel pain, there is no way to avoid it and you still open yourself to your feelings and accept the pain as a natural part of love.
Accept the painful memories, do not fear them, they happened in the past and can no longer hurt you.
No one wants to feel pain, everyone feels it. Menancing shapes half glimpsed from the corner of your vision are far more disturbing than the things we see clearly.
Observe your pain, breathe into it and allow it.
If you are breathing, you are alive. It never stops until the day you die, use it to help you stay connected with life...a breath of fresh air, a deep sigh of relief after a stressful day...
Connect fully with your environment what can you see, hear, touch, taste and smell?Abandon the search for pain free existence, the more you try to avoid the basic fact that all human life involves pain...
...the more you struggle with that pain when it arises and thus you suffer even more...accept the pain just like you accept the love that inevitably comes with living...
I am coming home to myself, layer by layer, the painful issues of the past soften and resolve.
I listen to many stories that are riveting, inspirational and moving. Most people have a more difficult journey that mine has been.
Pain and love,
not angry pain, not tearful pain, not reproachful, nto desperate...
Pain and love...pain and bliss.
As in birth as in death.
To David J.R.
When I was a little girl,
Grandmum told me a secret:
"If you really want something,
there will be a way."
Is it angels or the power of positive thinking?
Is it determination to act
or the courage to be guided?
Between these impulses the adventure is born.
The roaring of the ocean never stops
almost everyone is struggling
colours so sharp
hot, fluffy sand
with dry, salty crust on top
the taste of tears in your mouth
the pain just doesn't go away
and you are not alone
this realization comes
when you open your eyes,
your ears and your heart
and you hear other people out.
You stop and ponder,
why should this be?
Sunshine breaking into trilions
of fragments
in the shallow
the power of money,
love and creation
living so high
falling so low
rocks meeting water
sand meeting grass
blue meeting blue on the horizon
human meeting perfection
the perfection of the human mind.
On a damp,
fog-shrouded morning
a paleoanthropologist from Madrid
stands before the entrance to El Sidron
and gingerely lowers himself into the black hole.
An underground river
had hollowed out
a deep vein of sandstone
ten minutes into the cave
he discovers 'the tunnel of bones',
the last nine Neanderthals,
five young adults
two teenagers
a child about eight
and a three year-old toddler.
All showed signs of nutritional stress
in their teeth
not unusual in young Neanderthals
late in their time on Earth.
But a deeper desparation is etched
in their bones,
they were cannibalized
by the first humans.
Whoever ate their flesh
for whatever reason
starvation
or ritual,
within days they died
the ground bellow them
suddenly collapsed
leaving little time for hyenas
to scatter the remains.
The scientist picks up
the mineralized bone
of our closest prehistoric relative
who dominated Eurasia
for 200,000 years
and with the large brains
and enormous strength
seemed equipped to face anything
on Earth,
except those modern human migrants
from Africa,
us.
Why did one kind of human being survive,
and the other disappear?
With each generation
the humans
became increasingly
skilled
at predicting
and avoiding danger,
even now
when the wilderness
was pushed away
by the modern world
our foreheads are wrinkled
by any of a million
and one other
common worries
because our mind
keeps assessing
and judging
almost everything.
We are living
in quick earning
and spending times,
most people deal with their money
the same way
how they deal with their feelings.
The lucky ones
give and receive
graciously
with a hug and a smile.
They waste money
as if not worthy
of holding onto anything
precious.
Others are insatiable,
greedy
for more and more.
And some are as tight
with their purse
as they are around their heart,
the flow of giving and receiving
is awkward
and embarrassing for them.
In the early human times
the tight ones would not survive,
if your group rejects you
it won't be long
before the wolves find you.
Is it why,
so much energy
is spent,
worrying
whether people will like us?
Always looking for ways
to improve ourselves
or putting ourselves down
because we don't measure up.
We are so sophisticated
now
we can dream up
a fantasy of a person
we would like to be
then compare our real self
to that impossible
perfect image.
Think about the ambition
of any Stone Age man,
the more
the better chance of survival,
the more food
keeps him alive
through times of scarcity
the better shelter
protects him from weather
and wild animals
the more children
gives him a chance
that some of them survive...
and our modern mind
continues to look for more:
money, status, love
new car or new house
if you succeed
you are content
for a while
until you want more....
Thus evolution has shaped our minds
that we are almost inevitably
destined to be never satisfied...
The stories of a happy childhood
are all the same,
the parents love each other,
there are children to play with
and there is a bit of nature
to have adventures.
The stories of an injured childhood
are all different,
unique,
tragic
and complicated,
just like most human lives.
When those children
will grow up,
almost half of them
will at some point
be so overwhelmed
by misery
that they seriously contemplate suicide.
With all the professional help,
advice and wordly wisdom
we can not rekindle
that sparkle of the great fire of life...
Love is radiating from every infant,
springtime,
the power of youth,
what will happen to them
at the end of summer?
We live longer than ever before
but with each extra year
we are loosing the hunger
to conquer the world.
Who knows what the future holds,
there is only hope
warm afternoon sun of mid-life
abundance of harvest
joy of sharing....
The Happiness Trap
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