06052014
I realized today that I am afraid of
being happy. I was talking to a friend and trying to explain how I
have experienced myself and life lately, and when it came down to
saying “I have simply been happy” I noticed a resentment towards
making a statement like that. To break the moment down: there was an
impulse/idea to express myself through the word “happy” - I
reacted to the word with resentment – a push to say the words
despite the resentment – followed by the fear of having made a
mistake – followed by thoughts along the lines of “what does he
think of me now”, “did I screw it up”.
When I stopped to think about this
experience I realized that because I have grown used to thinking of
life in polarities – the good and the bad – I am constantly both
afraid of being unhappy (because it is unpleasant) and happy (because
it always leads to unhappiness, which is again unpleasant). Because I
have seen how the ups and downs of living life in autopilot always
lead to each other, I have created an ideal and a desire to find the
in-between, the equilibrium – a state of balance that would be
neither here nor there. I realized that because of this goal I am
afraid of any experience that is NOT bad (unpleasant), because I
interpret them to be in the “good” end of the spectrum (red flag
- “you're gonna crash!”, “this is not going to last!”), when
in fact this might not be the case.
In my experience there are three ways
to position oneself towards life and the experience thereof. One can
either filter one's experience through the negative (pessimism,
cynicism) or through the positive (optimism, hope) – or one can do
neither, and simply take the reality in as it is (realism,
pragmatism). I do not mean to place these three in any order, and I
do not claim that the latter is the “best” way to live life – I
have simply found through my own experience that it is usually the
most real, genuine or honest way of living, and I do prefer truth
over happiness, as focusing on the truth usually leads to solutions
whereas focusing on happiness usually leads to compromises.
The dilemma that bothers me here is
that what I have defined as the in-between/equilibrium is actually
enjoyable – just not in the
same way as the positive polarity. I interpret myself enjoying life
as “bad” because I believe I should not be enjoying myself, that
enjoyment is bad because if I enjoy myself I must be off-balance.
This is a misunderstanding I need to correct. There is a clear
difference between enjoyment and having my head in the clouds, so to
speak – as well as there's a difference in experiencing pain and
suffering. The equilibrium does not mean that I should not be
experiencing anything at all, but that I simply experience the things
I come across without holding onto them, without transforming them
into mental scenarios, into rocks that I load onto my back, and
instead allowing them to just flow through me as space flows through
time. Perhaps to be in balance is to know how to bring myself down
from the clouds as well as to pick myself up from the ditch.
I
realize that the experience I now labeled as “happiness” has not
been just pure enjoyment but that I have slightly gone to the
positive end, and what I need to realize is that IT'S ALRIGHT – I
don't need to panic, lol - “oh fuck, I'm gonna crash now?!” - lol
– no, what I need to do now is simply to land gracefully from the
heights. I can trust myself to handle myself well enough to not
plummet back down.
And to
be honest, I am not entirely sure how much of my happiness experience
has been balanced and how much of it has been hype, precisely because
of the resentment. I am probably looking at my enjoyable experiences
through the resentment filter and seeing “bad” in them even
though there would actually be none (or very little).
This
dilemma of what kind of enjoyment is OK and what is not calls for an
experiment:
- I commit myself to allow myself to enjoy life and self-expression without guilt.
- I commit myself to allow myself to use the word “happy” to express myself (because when I observe myself it is clear that I am living this word at the moment – no point in suppressing myself).
- I commit myself to observe and take note of any and all energetic sensations I experience in order to map out my happiness experience.
- I commit myself to not suppress any of the energetic sensations (feelings) I experience, but to instead live through them within and as breath.
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