Don’t Take Life So Seriously
If I were to magically design a special gadget for the modern world, it would be a device fitted near the ear that once in a while whispers a simple word: “Relax”.
Millions of people suffer every day because they take their life too seriously. All day, every day we make ourselves miserable because of thinking too much about our own life. On weekdays we think about how we are wasting our life doing a horrible job, and on weekends we worry about whether we are enjoying to the fullest or about the forthcoming week. Being single, we fantasize about living happily ever after finding “the one” and after finding someone, the friction seems to never end. Everyday we care about “my career”, “my salary”, “my relationship”, “the meaning of my life” and how I am going to climb Maslow’s pyramid to achieve self-actualization.
According to Albert Ellis, one of the pioneers of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), one of the most important causes of human misery is grandiosity, in other words taking ourselves too seriously. We bombard ourselves with “must” statements (“I must be good-looking”, “I must have a great career”, “I must be productive everyday”) and make ourselves miserable when we don’t live up to our self-imposed standards. Ellis recommends replacing the word “must” by “would prefer to”. I would prefer to be good looking, I would prefer to have a great career, I would prefer to be productive everyday. This change allows to be compassionate to ourselves when we fall short, to accept ourselves as humans rather than input-output machines.
Eastern philosophy is heavily concerned with attacking this grandiosity that we have in our minds. Buddhism tells us that the idea of “self” is an illusion and that the more we delude ourselves into thinking we are a “self” (the thing you call “I”) separate from the rest of the cosmos, the more we suffer. Ego is the root of entitlement, grandiosity and attachments that lead to suffering. According to the Buddhist, we all are interconnected to nature and to each other. The more we seek to isolate ourselves from reality, the more we will suffer. (Read my article: Best Ideas from Buddhism)
The Chinese philosophy of Taoism recommends us to see things as they are instead of categorizing them into compartments using definitions. According to the Taoist, the Tao (the “way” according to which things happen) is all-encompassing and any attempt to go against it is sure to backfire. What this means is that we should flow along with life rather than struggle to get ahead every time. Life is an activity which you can fail at but with practice, you can get better and flow along with it with the help of effortless action (wu-wei). The ancient Indian school of thought Advaita Vedanta also focuses heavily on the one-ness of things and argues that duality (seeing things as separate from one-another) is but an illusion.
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced” — Soren Kierkegaard
We are all illusioned by our identities (“I am like this”, “I am like that”), that we get caught up inside our own pre-conceived beliefs rather than treating our life as a reality to be experienced.
All-in-all most of ancient philosophy and modern psychotherapy is telling us that we need to take ourselves less seriously. We are born, we live a few decades on this blue speck of a planet, and then we depart. That’s all there is to it. Nobody cares about your life and your decisions as much as you do. Alan Watts, a pioneer of Zen Buddhism and Taoism said a simple yet profound thing about the meaning of life:
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” — Alan Watts
So, relax. Everything is alright and you are okay :)
