What is your greatest lesson?
When you are chasing happiness, you are bound to hit roadblocks. Things work out for you when you deeply understand certain indisputable truths of your existence. For starters, you don’t really mean much. In the larger perspectives, all your successes and failures mean absolutely nothing. Whatever it is that you are chasing, even if you achieve it, it’s not going to be enough.
It’s never enough.
Unless you accept that you can only try.
This realization comes at a price.
To dig deeper, imagine all those moments when you felt hopeless. Like really hopeless. When you felt that you were done.
Now, imagine how you would have dealt with those situations if you were to be put into them once again.
Exactly.
It won’t overwhelm you much. You’ve seen it all. Even if you haven’t done it all, you’ve at least gotten a sneak peek of that chakravyuh—I’ll be expounding on this subject in more detail in my next blogpost—and you know it’s not that bad. Anymore.
It’s the same reason why you watch reruns of your favourite TV show. You are used to surprises and yet not amazed by them.
Once we’ve experienced something profound, even if it comes at the cost of horror, your mind calculates and makes notes for us. In a way, your brain is your biggest biographer. You may not realize it but you are your brain’s superstar. All the scripts and dialogues and stunts are exquisitely written for you.
If you are reading this, chances are you are reading quietly, and you can hear those words you are reading, right? What is that?
This relationship between you and yourself remains unexplored for the most part. And one day, you wake up only to realize that it has been a long while since you’ve convinced yourself about anything. You’ve spent so much time trying to convince others.
So, yes, without further ado, my greatest lesson has been displacement. When you’ve far removed from your (comfortable) place or (uncomfortable) mindset, you will find yourself once again. You will greet yourself with a fresh outlook. You’ll notice things about yourself that you didn’t bother to pinpoint earlier.
Maybe this happens when you are getting older and not necessarily wiser.
Maybe not.
It’s an open playground.
Your greatest lesson might be so invested in the answers that you are trying to find that you might overlook the question(s) completely. Who knows?
Or, better still, your pursuit of happiness is indeed your greatest lesson in equanimity. Again, who knows?