We are bombarded every day with thousands of messages which are making a lot of people very unhappy. These messages fall into three categories.
FIRST CATEGORY: LIFE SHOULD BE EASY
One message, which is totally false, is that life can be easy, fun,
and free from struggle. It seems that we learn early on that life is hard. From the beginning, is anything more obvious than that life is hard? Every child finds it difficult to use the bathroom properly, speak clearly, and walk. Going to school, making friends, learning to drive, dating, being married, raising children, finding a career, being retired, having one’s health fail, dying, writing a weekly blog, none of this is easy. If you are lucky there can be moments where you can spend a week at the beach at an all-inclusive resort where everything is easy and fun, but this is the exception; and after a week at the beach, mentally healthy people want to get back to our life of struggle. It seems that people were made for struggle.
Because life is hard, we should expect some anxiety. Some things can go wrong and that is scary. We should also expect disappointment, because the perfect life that we construct in our minds never really comes to fruition the way we imagine it.
If we are going to find a soul satisfying happiness which we all desire, we must learn to accept the difficulties of life. We must learn to deal with the anxiety and disappointments which are part of life without resorting to drugs, alcohol, sex, or other risky behaviors. This acceptance is not easy and takes constant effort, but for most people it is possible.
SECOND CATEGORY: LIFE SHOULD BE FAIR
Another message which seems prevalent is that life should be
fair. In every culture it is clear that some people get advantages of wealth, privilege, and health, and others do not. Life has not been fair to me; I have received far more advantages than I deserve. I was born in the USA, I had good parents and was never abused or neglected, I was able to attend a public school where I learned to read and write, and I have lived in relative wealth compared to the rest of the world. However, some kids have better parents (my mom was an alcoholic and my dad was emotionally distant for most of my life), attend better schools (the public schools I attended were not the best), and I have spent time in various hospitals and had to face difficult health problems that some people seem to avoid. Of course, many kids grow up with abusive parents, live in countries that have no public education, and spend a lot of time in hospitals or live in countries where medical care is non-existent. Life is not fair. We should not be surprised when we are treated unfairly.
I would like to live in a country where there is liberty and justice for all, and it is good to desire that state and work toward that ideal, but we will only find real happiness if we can accept that life is unfair. Anyone who looks honestly at their lives will come to understand that sometimes we get more than we deserve and other times we will get less.
THIRD CATEGORY: WE CAN KNOW THE TRUTH
Finally, there is a message that we can know the truth, and we
should not trust those who disagree with us. I believe we should pursue the truth, and we live in a world with books, teachers, and the Internet. Learning has never been easier. I believe in going to school, reading, and seriously studying from people who know more than I do. But what I don’t know will always exceed what I do know, and I should never pretend otherwise.
Like most people, I have opinions on how our government should operate. I have opinions on immigration, economic policy, and foreign affairs. But I have not worked at the border, I have not had extensive interviews with immigrants, nor have I done any serious study of immigration. In the same way, I have managed our household finances, taken macro and microeconomics economics in college, and I have opinions on how taxes should be structured. But seriously, what do I know about how to manage the United States budget of 6.5 trillion dollars?
REJECT THE LIES
These three truths, that life is hard, life is unfair and I can never know the truth for sure, ar
e hard to accept. They become especially hard when life is particularly difficult, or unfair, or when we have studied a subject extensively and we feel like we really know everything there is to know about that subject. They become even harder to accept when we receive thousands of messages every day that tell us life can be easy and fun if we just had (fill in the blank: more money, fame, better stuff, a different spouse, or a different job). Or life could be fair and just if we just changed the law or elected a certain official. Or we can really know the truth if we would just listen to (fill in the blank), because they really do know.
Part of finding a deep, soul-satisfying happiness comes when we become aware of these messages and reject them. If we want deep, soul-satisfying happiness we must accept that life will be hard and work to make it easier, that life will be unfair while working for justice where we can, and we must strive to know the truth while accepting what we don’t know will always exceed what we do know.
