Being OK with where you are

There's a certain weirdness in my mind about allowing. A dichotomy between what I want and what I'm already happy with.

You can't get away from wanting to grow--wanting new stuff, new experiences, new relationships--yet the best way to allow that growth is to be really happy with where you are, which, in my mind, almost means that it's not ok to want more. If I were really happy, I think, I'd just stagnate and never move on to anything new. This can't be farther from the truth, yet I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the actual truth--that by accepting where I am I open myself up to all sorts of new possibilities.

It's fucked up.

Our society is inundated with stories of people who were never content, who used their discontent to drive themselves to new and better highs. At least, that's the story we tell. Men who have fought their way to the top at the expense of their personal lives, who never learn to be happy with what they have--this is a universal tale that generally ends in tragedy, leaving a legacy of urine collected in jars (who was that? Hunt? somebody help me here), insinuations of pedophilia (thank you, Michael Jackson), or feeling they are above the law (thank you, politicians everywhere).

We'd all rather be happy, but for some reason in this scenario happy = poor. I know plenty of unhappy poor people. We look at the apparently happy rich people and wonder whether they're truly happy (Oprah springs to mind).

So my work is to untie this convoluted mess in my head and choose the truth that works for me.

Anything that you believe is true, by the way. If you believe that men are womanizing scoundrels, or that the world is out to get you, or that we're all tiny insignificant specks, you'll see evidence all around you.

It's partially Law of Attraction--like attracts like, and you get what you think about. I think it's also, though, our inherent desire to be right. We look for evidence to support our beliefs, and if we believe all mechanics are crooks, we'll remember the $130 oil change and forget that nice guy who stopped to help when our car broke down.

I don't think we should go through the world with blinders on, but what's the point of dwelling on crap that only holds us back?

Edison (who wasn't nearly as cool as Tesla, by the way, but he works for this example) could have focused on how many dysfunctional light bulbs he'd made and grown discouraged. Instead, he saw every failed experiment as a step closer to success. We can see his work as maddening, but considering how long it took him, I think he saw it as more of a game. Nobody could try that many times and think of it as drudgery.

I'm not advocating locking onto a goal like a pit bull on a mailman; rather seeing your work as a game--seeing life as a game--not to be won or lost, but to be played.

I lead a rich fantasy life. Yesterday while jamming along with Grand Funk Railroad, I couldn't help but imagine myself as a rock star, and wonder what my life would be like if I'd pursued that goal from an early age. There is a tinge of regret there, which I try to avoid, and which is why I'm thinking about being ok with where I am. Maybe it's silly to think I could have been a rock star--it's a common dream--but it's one thing I felt passionate about when I was a kid.

Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, says that 10,000 hours of practice brings us to mastery, citing examples like The Beatles and Bill Gates. Can you imagine doing anything for 10,000 hours without being passionate about it? Or while feeling like it's drudgery the whole time?

There are plenty of things I could feel passionate about, but fear and frustration make me wary of caring that much. These are not Vortex-y feelings, obviously. And when I do have Vortex-y feelings (hope, joy, love), the thought of investing time and energy into such projects sounds fun. The process sounds fun, rather than a drive toward a certain outcome.

The cynic in me, the part that likes to be right, thinks that the Vortex is just a trick to get me to do what I've always wanted to do. It's a different kind of control than Christianity--which got me to not do things I wanted to do--but a controlling trick nonetheless. Things won't magically come to me when I'm happier, I think. I will have wasted all this energy on just being happy, and will end up less happy when I wake up from this dream because I'll realize nothing magically came when I was happy. A more substantial, lasting happiness will come after years of drudgery and misery and hard work.

Which is nonsense, I know, but I latch onto it like--well, like a pit bull onto a mailman.

I know what Abraham would say if I spoke to them about it. "Stop telling that story. Tell the story the way you want it to be."

So what's my story? I am acutely aware of my false beliefs, which will or won't make it easier to replace them with new ones? No, that doesn't really help.

Go to my usual story of life is good in general, girlfriend is amazing and wonderful, etc? Jessica is, of course, always amazing and wonderful, and that does help, but it doesn't change the way I think about money and success. In a way, it both helps and hurts--I feel like I can do amazing things with her, yet I feel bad for not having done them already because I want to be amazing for her. (She says I already am, which really does make me feel good.)

I feel like it's a problem to be solved, which sometimes is fun and sometimes is frustrating. I'd like to rewrite the code in my brain, download success software a la The Matrix and start fresh without having to police my thoughts.

And yes, I know, the more I focus on this problem the more real I make my lack of solution. On the bright side, when I do allow the solution it should be a HUGE one, because of all the fine-tuning I'm doing on the problem.

So now--now I focus on the solution. I think how nice it will feel to let myself be who I really am, to not beat myself up for not letting myself be me. To look around my life and really appreciate the beautiful-ness I already have. Now I tell my new story, the story I want to tell.

I've spent way more than 10,000 hours living, so I must be really good at it. And I must love life, because that's a lot of time to spend on drudgery. And, actually, I definitely do love life, not just provable by the default that I'm still here. Life is fun. It's where we enjoy cool stuff like music and intimacy and coffee. It's full of new experiences, like joining a pool league and finding a new author. So, yeah, I definitely love life.

No matter what I do, I'm generally good at it pretty quickly. Nursing, massage, grammar . . . making chainmail . . . . So if I can figure all that shit out, some of which is more fun than others, I can figure out whatever I need to. Rather, whatever I want to. And what I want is an amazing and full life, which I pretty much have in fits and starts, rather than just wandering through wondering what the hell's going on, which I do less and less.

And I want to appreciate what I have, which I do. Nothing worse than an ungrateful bastard who can't see the really cool stuff that's already there. And my life is full of cool stuff--friends coming over for movies, lots of hobbies and cuddling at home and on the go, music everywhere I turn, audiobooks and paperbooks and ebooks, and a really cool jacket that everyone compliments me on that I got for $25. Big things and little things and they're all good.

And I'm good.