EXPECTATIONS

A young woman gives birth to a baby girl.  At 6 months, the baby gets ill and is taken to a hospital. The young mother waits nervously while her baby is being ministered to by a physician.  After awhile, the physician emerges from the examination room and tells her that her baby has died.  The young woman is distraught.  The physician asks if she would like to see her daughter, to touch her for the last time.  She nods yes and goes into the examination room.  Tears filling her eyes, she holds her daughter's hand.  Fifteen minutes pass.  Suddenly, a cough.  Her daughter has coughed.  And again.  She screams, the physician rushes into the room, disbelievingly checks the baby's heart and cries, "Alive, she is alive."  Can you imagine the mother's euphoric joy?  The totally ecstatic consuming joy.   Her precious daughter is alive.

Did you feel euphoric when you woke up this morning?  Likely not.  Why not?  Like the baby, you are alive, are you not?  Well, you may think, the situations are different: when you went to sleep last night, you expected to be alive in the morning, and so finding yourself alive was not euphoric the way it was for the young mother to learn her daughter was alive.  True. 

And what does that tell us?  The expected is not as bliss generating as the unexpected.  Finding a $5 bill on the street produces more excitement, more pleasure, than getting a regular $1,000 weekly paycheck.   We  buy lottery tickets knowing that should the unexpected happen and we win despite the unbelievably horrendous odds against us, it will be the most euphoric moment of our life.

In every aspect of our life, the unexpected has more impact on us than does the expected.  Positively or negatively.  Is that not why we feel more dismay when the car unexpectedly won't start in the morning than the pleasure we feel (if any) when it does start for the 500th consecutive time?

The irony is that as humans, we have the wonderful capacity to think ahead, to anticipate what might go wrong, and to microplan our endeavors, our lives.   All of which increases the likelihood of our succeeding and our expectations coming true...and, as is crystal clear, decreases our pleasure and bliss, and may even produce a bit of ho-hum, when they do.

The lesson?  Don't think it all out in advance, don't dot all the i's and cross all the t's.  Throw a bit of  forethought, a bit of preparation, a bit of caution to the wind.  Wing it some.  It might just set your spirits soaring!

CLEAN SLATES

It is generally agreed that a newborn comes into the world with a clean mental slate...knowing nothing, having no opinions or beliefs, its mind ripe to be fed.  And that during its life, it fills the slate with every thought it has and every action it takes.  True to a point.

What that view fails to recognize is that we each have free will as to what we think and believe...that we are not bound by what is presently on the slate.  Haven't you ever done that:  completely altered your mind about some thing or someone?  Is that not tantamount to erasing the tape, reversing it back to a clean one, and inscribing something new on it?  And if that is so, and it is, is it not more accurate to say that when we choose to think or do something, we do so onto a clean slate: either affirming (in a sense, rewriting) what was on the slate, or erasing what was on it and inscribing something new?  In either case, passing through a clean slate phase.

Is it important to think of it that way? Yes.  That perspective repeatedly reminds us that we are forever free to choose the course of our lives, to make it what we will, not bound to the past or to current social mores, and that, to paraphrase the words of William Ernest Henley in Invictus, "I am the only writer on my slate".  That perspective prods us to recognize the multitude of choices we have every day of our lives with regard to so many things, and that awareness feeds our sense of the magnificence of human life.

REGRETS

"Say you're sorry for what you did...or didn't do.  That'll fix things and so-and-so will feel better".  All destructive nonsense.

Whatever you say or do has zero effect on the past.  Can you in any way change the past?  The past is not here, gone, over.  It cannot be fixed or changed.  And you didn't do or not do it.  You didn't live in the past and you don't live in the future.  You live only this moment.  And it's gone.  This moment.  Gone.  This moment.  Gone, gone, gone.  Are you responsible for what "you" did when you were 5 years old?  10 years old?  Any wonder New Year's resolutions are generally soon broken?  The you that made them on December 31 is not the you that is alive on January 15. Is your body the same?  No, it changes every moment.  Is your mind the same?  No, it is constantly learning new matters, forgetting things, changing beliefs and perspectives and positions.  Are your emotions the same?  Not necessarily.  So in what way are you and you the same?

And saying you are sorry makes who feel better?  Who is it that you owe an apology to?  What type of person feels good because you feel bad?  And you will feel bad because regret confesses guilt and responsibility and unworthiness and is the progenitor of lowered self-esteem.

Today, saying you are sorry is not enough.  They have upped the ante.  You must be "very sorry", you must acknowledge that you must have been totally crazy or an idiot (to have done what you didn't do...you weren't alive then, you are only alive now). You must be contrite, pay penitence, and chomp around beating your chest and barking "mea culpa, mea culpa".  Problem is:  you're not the mea.

The past and the future are not reality.  Reality is only what is.  And you are responsible only for what you do in the is.

 Isn't that so?

HAPPINESS

Happiness can only be found in reality.  What is in your imagination may be pleasant to think about, but it is not in reality and cannot make you happy.  The same is true of memories.  They may seem more able to make you happy because they were once real, but, alas, they are no longer part of reality.  Happiness stems from "is" not "was" or "may be" or even "will be.".

Happiness is not a requirement for life.  One can survive and live quite well, be successful in business, have a good family and good friends, without being happy.  We are not born happy, or unhappy.   We do not acquire happiness from anyone or anything outside ourselves.  If that were true, it would be much more common for people to be happy than it presently is. 

Happiness is not merely a psychological state that exists solely in our minds, or solely in our emotions, as commonly perceived.  It exists in every fiber and part of our being. It is manifested in every heart beat, in every breath we take.  It is life itself. 

Happiness is not something we need to acquire.  Unfortunately, we have been led to believe that that is so, and most of us seek it in all the wrong places.  If we are alive, it is already resident within us, within the wondrous and beautiful life within us.  There are not five steps or ten steps to happiness. There is but one:  to recognize and sense it through our awareness, which far transcends what we know through our five senses.  It is in our mind and body and spirit and soul.

It is You...and it is there for you to be.

ASPIRE

We have been taught from the beginning to aspire, to desire, to covet, to crave, to hope for…things, position, power.  We have been told that aspiration is a prerequisite to success.  We have been led to believe that happiness comes from the attainment of our desires, our aspirations.

We have been taught and told wrong.

We aspire for what we do not have, what we perceive as necessary for our well-being and self-esteem.  If the aspiration is driven from within ourselves, then it is bred from a belief that we are incomplete.  And that belief is the source of psychological suffering.  If the aspiration is driven from without, rooted in a belief that we do not measure up to others, that we are not worthy because we do not meet social standards,  then it is an insatiable aspiration, for there are and will always be others who have more.  Either aspiration fixes our attention on what we don’t have rather than on what we do have. 

And the unassailable consequence is unhappiness.  Do we not see so many, including ourselves, who have so much yet are still unhappy?It is deprivation that flips the switch…for when we have less, and desire less, we value more what we do have, and that is the true root of happiness.

If man aspires to build a castle, he should do so not because he believes he cannot be happy without one, but because it is an expression of his recognition of the glorious and wondrous and beauteous everything he already has:  Life.

DESIRES

Man is desire driven.    Every action he takes every waking moment is fueled by desire.  Even his sleeping time can be said to be driven by his desire to be well-rested, to be more alert, to be more energetic, the next day.  Man is the only life species with free will, and it is that aspect of his nature that empowers his desires.  Man is free to choose which desires he wishes to pursue, and the extent to which and how he will pursue them.

  

When he attains a desire, man experiences a measure of contentment, of satisfaction, and of pride.  When he fails, or perceives himself as failing, in attaining a desire, he feels a measure of ineptitude and discontent.   The frequency and scope and importance of his successful and unsuccessful desire attainments play a significant role in his overall happiness or unhappiness.

It is critical in your desire to learn about desires that you recognize that virtually no desire is a solitary one, though it may be perceived as the ultimate one.  Rather, each desire must be seen as but one of a related package of desires…and that one unsuccessful desire within that package may preclude the attainment of any other desire in the package.

For example, you desire to be rich.  That can be perceived as your ultimate desire.  To attain it, you must also have the desire to choose your method of attaining it, the desire to invest the time and energy and money it will take to attain it, the desire to risk failure and to bear possible ridicule and loss of self esteem, etc.  The attainment of your ultimate desire is dependent to a great extent on your attainment of each of the other desires in its package.

At the beginning, as an infant, man’s desires are few: food to satisfy hunger, affection to ease pain.  As man grows older, the number and complexity of his desires increases geometrically, to the point that it is likely difficult or him to identify all of them.  There may be subconscious psychological pressures that hide certain desires from himself.  He may have desires that, to a degree, conflict, or to him seem to conflict, with each other:  he may wish to be both just and compassionately forgiving, assertive and cooperative, spiritual and rational, independent minded and just one of the boys.  He may keep certain desires secret from family and friends because he believes they would not approve of them.  He may have unremitting desires that he knows are immoral and improper.  He may not be certain whether his desires are thoughtful or emotion driven.

Magnifying the problem is the fact that little or no attention is given in our educational systems to the whole issue of desire, though critical to the shaping of your own personal identity, and vital to your quest for happiness.  Desires are often relegated to the “too personal to reveal” list.

Overrun with desires propelling him in various directions, it is understandable for a man to step on the brakes, and just drift unproductively aimlessly. Or, to discard his desires, or at least to stack them away, and accept society’s desires as his own.  Society is willing, nay anxious, to tell him which desires he ought have and how and when he ought pursue them.  Social proprieties, normalities and conventions replace his true desires.  Is it any wonder that so many are stressed and discontented with life, uncertain of who they really are and what they truly want out of life…the path to fulfillment and happiness hidden from view?

The journey to a new and better life, more satisfying life, begins as it did in infancy…with a clean slate.  On that slate we must list our life’s desires, slowly, specifically, carefully, clearly.  For it is those desires that are of preeminent importance in shaping the quality and value of our life.  The truer, the deeper, those desires are, and the loyalty we have toward them, the greater the likelihood of our attaining them.  They must never be surrendered to the desires of others, nor relegated to a position of unimportance.  Compatible desires  are the cornerstone of all successful human relationships: marital, business, social.   Your chosen desires must, each moment, be given the honor and prestige of which they are truly deserving.

THE U.S. WHAT?

What word means regulate, command, direct, manage, supervise, discipline, wield authority, restrain, prohibit, curb, bridle, dominate, run, decide, hold at bay?

Govern

And what word is not found once in the original U.S. Constitution?

Government