Fantasy: More Painful Than Reality

If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day
Leonard Cohen

"Life is difficult", M Scott Peck tells us in the opening words of The Road Less Travelled. He intends us to understand two simple truths: first, "There are no easy answers" and second, "Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, it no longer matters."

Peck is not suggesting that we abandon hope or happiness. He is suggesting we learn to make the best of our lives, notwithstanding the difficulty. He's advising us to get over our fantasies of ease.

Happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of our unhealthy or unhelpful habits of mind and the discomfort of being ruled by them.

Self-entrapment

Most of us set ourselves up for unhappiness and daily dis-ease by railing against these self-evident truths and ignoring the advice. At some level and in various ways we tell ourselves that life should be easy; that there ought to be a simpler way; that if life is difficult or challenging, then something is definitely wrong rather than normal.

We may do it by accepting the truth (that life is difficult) at an intellectual level only, without really embedding it within our primary beliefs. If, deep down, we believe "Life should be something other than the difficulty it often is", or "It is someone else's responsibility to shield me from the pain of living", we value something unattainable and set ourselves up for frequent disappointment. We'll have an unnecessarily bumpy ride and may look for something or someone to blame. But blaming ourselves for our negative habits and mistakes or blaming others for the consequences of them, causes more unhappiness than the actual situation.

We gain insight into the real source of our suffering when we truly understand how much we personally contribute to it by projecting our beliefs and thoughts on to an otherwise neutral world, then choosing our feelings based on what we perceive. It is our personal interpretation of and response to events in our lives that actually determine how they impact on us. When we pay attention to these personal choices, examine and understand them, we naturally move toward a more intelligent and useful engagement with our lives as they are.

"If we examine how we constantly personalise everything, we'll see that the real source of our misery is our failure to manage, educate, and transform our mental states."
Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche

We may not experience difficulty continuously, nor be constantly aware of it. We may create schemes aimed at increasing our own comfort, and we may rationalise other people's pain. But we ignore the truth at our peril: life is often difficult and unless we accept that, and habituate strategies to respond creatively to pain and challenge, it comes around to bite us. Turning away from it actually increases the difficulty because at challenging times we are then able to apply only those personal tactics and strategies we have habituated every day: anything else will be inaccessible precisely because it is not a habit.

Perhaps, like me . . . though you might mouth the words, you're still some distance from accepting the fact that you just don't escape pain. And to the extent that you don't acknowledge and work with it in your own life . . . sadly, you seem to make it worse.
Andrea McQuillin.

I'd rather be fishing . . .

In the main street of a small town recently, I saw an amusing illustration of this. He drove and parked a car with a registration plate that read BHAPPY, set within a frame that read "I'd rather be fishing". (That was the amusing bit.) They were shopping and he seemed grumpy about this bit of everyday reality. (OK, they may both have been delighted to be shopping or she may have wished to fish. You can see where I'm going with this . . . work with me here.) I can't be happy doing this! If only I could escape and go fishing, I'd be happy . . . is the fantasy I imagined he had at the time.

The basic error is the flawed belief that there is something outside of ourselves on which our mood depends, some place else where happiness exists, or someone else who will or should make us happy; that once we've got through all our duties and responsibilities, then we can enjoy life but in the meantime . . . if only . . . if only . . , resulting in heavy-hearted wish-we-were-somewhere-else-ness. We create this conflict by ourselves and entirely within ourselves, and mostly without noticing the process. We wish we were not who we are.

The longing for Paradise is man's longing not be man.
Milan Kundera

More self-entrapment

We repeat the error in various ways: by basing our degree of contentment for example, on how fairly people treat us, on progress we make through our To Do lists, on the degree of happiness our family members experience, or on whether or not others appear to like and approve of us. We may put ourselves in situations and circumstances we continuously resent and blame others for. By, for instance -

• Taking employment with organisations arranged hierarchically and feeling annoyed about their failure to operate as consultative, consensual collectives providing unlimited autonomy or even reasonable freedom of choice.
  
  
• Failing and feeling bad about not "getting through everything" within a certain timeframe at a meeting, as though calculating the time and effort required to discuss, problem-solve, reach agreement and make plans is a precise science rather than a matter of guesswork and chance.
  
  
• Choosing occupations involving proximity to and daily involvement with inevitable events (traffic snarl-ups, for example) or people of predictable characteristics (stressed-out clients, hormonally-charged adolescents, certain professions famous for their huge egos, arrogance, power-tripping and childish tantrums for instance) - then complaining about the unfairness of those phenomena rather than accepting them as part of the territory of our own choosing.
  
  
• Establishing a personal or a working relationship with the expectation either that the other/s will change or that the other/s will not change, and holding grudges when people decide just to be themselves anyway.
  
  

Searching for stability is one way we demonstrate a belief that life should be something other than its reality. As writer Gerald Jampolsky points out, it's like buying goldfish on the basis that they won't die, whereas dying randomly and inexplicably is what goldfish do best. If we want everything settled and stable, we'll find that the faster the world changes around us, we'll increasingly become victims of the changes we resist.

The average human being thinks that happiness lies in stability, in tying up all the loose ends and having things under control. But actually, happiness lies in being able to relax with our true condition, which is basically fleeting, dynamic, and fluid, not in any way solid, not in any way permanent.
It's transient by nature.
Pema Chodron

We share adversity

Life is difficult but we mature only when we are tested. We can see and use difficulty as a stimulus to psychological and spiritual self-growth. We can learn and exercise mental muscles and trustworthy processes that transform our attitudes towards difficulty and challenge. (If we are serious in our intent we'll find the necessary support and resources; there are plenty available.) With these we can make better use of our own lives, and more constructively address suffering in the lives of the other people in our community, nation and planet.

Pain is shared by all humanity. We don't have to take it personally; everybody suffers. It's the condition that binds us all. Rather than trying to escape, we'd do better to pay attention and work with it. It's a happier choice.

"Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal in life is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that they've been robbed. The fact is that most putts don't drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old-time rail journey - delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally with beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank God for letting you have the ride."
Gordon B. Hinckley

© Copyright 2002 - 2007 Tom Watkins Group. All rights reserved.

Select and contact a Mentor if you'd like to discuss these ideas or want support to make progress with your own issues.

Additional Material:

Exuberance, Enthusiasm and Leadership
Stumbling on Happiness: are we just too stupid to be happy?
Work-Life Balance
Managing Depression and Despondency
Developing Habits of Mind
The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret & Science of Happiness
Attitudinal Agriculture
Losing and Finding Hope
What to do when you don't know what to do
Ain't it Awful!?
Will Sunshine Cheer Us Up?
Authentic Happiness

To choose the world means first of all to see it clearly, to shed fantasy and habit, to look, and look again, to let ourselves be broken open by its intricacy and its mystery."
Philip Simmons

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