Less the 3 that haven’t worked so well lately

The last time I checked, and this was purely routine maintenance, I was still an average person. With average likes and dislikes. Average opinions (mostly) and an average amount of desire to be happy, be successful, be something slightly better than I was yesterday. The checklist was short but most boxes were ticked, so I thought this was all well and good.
Then I started thinking more about it. I know, I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself. I had the time, it was early in the day, so the dopamine levels were still running pretty high and … well, it just happened. I started thinking about Life and what it meant and what role I actually had in it.
At first, nothing materialized. I was staring at a picture on my study wall at the time, an old French poster of a man leaping out of a cup of coffee (don’t ask) and I waited. I thought the usual random images might start appearing in my mind, like in a dream, and I would slowly start to piece together the narrative. A story unfolding that explained why I was happy or sad, interested or having trouble staying awake. Feelings that I have most every day. But nothing was coming.
So, I went outside, took a few deep breaths and watched the leaves shimmering in the wind. Listened to the squirrel in our Elm tree, yelling at my cat and wondered again, what’s life all about?
That’s when it came to me. Pretty straightforward actually.
Don’t Get Caught up in the Questions
So, I rolled with it.
We all talk to ourselves. We do. While driving, while walking out alone, while conditioning our hair in the shower. We talk to ourselves, because as a general rule, we listen. We take the time and because of our close proximity to the person talking, we understand that something is bothering us and it’s time to pay attention.
I read somewhere once, or maybe I came up with this and forgot, that posing the right question, is more important and more revelatory than coming up with the right answer. Answers can be very simple and off-handed.
Yes.
No.
Because I don’t feel like it.
And they often aren’t 100% honest, because no one likes admitting that they are broken, or having a hard time in life or are completely unsure of how to get out of the trouble they got themselves into.
But the right question, the right words chosen to express how we are really feeling, unlocks the hidden emotions roiling under the surface, wreaking havoc while remaining quietly out of view. That’s the magic of it.
And because of this, we tend to fall in love with questions. Those that we ask, those that are posed to us by friends and loved ones and apparently those asked constantly by complete strangers writing articles and books that probed mercilessly at times, into our psyche, forcing us to look inward far more often than we should.
As a result, we begin to believe that the answers to most of life’s burning questions are answerable by spending more quality time inside our own heads. That if we list out, The Six fastest ways to a happy marriage or The 10 reasons for not getting married in the first place, that this will provide us with insight, a working plan or at least a few obvious mistakes that we can avoid making.
However, questions should be used sparingly, like condiments. A little goes a long way towards appeasing the palate, without becoming the entire focus of the meal. In other words, ask the questions that you can actually answer. Have I ever been happy? If the answer is yes, then what caused it, and most importantly, can you do it again? Do I love my wife? If the answer is no, find out what changed.
Use questions to guide you, not to entertain you. Spend as little time inside your head searching through archives for answers. Spend more time outside, in Nature, where most of the answers reside, because anything that we are going through today, anything, that is causing us pain and regret, has already happened before. The solutions are out there.
Always trust yourself
Trust is a handshake. A warm embrace between friends, meeting each other for the first time or parting for the rest of their lives. Trust is what allows you to get near the edge, because someone won’t let you fall, or leaping off of it, not waiting for the sudden stop but for the release that was always nearby.
We talk often about trust in relationships, and how breaking it, leaves us unmoored and alone. It’s the glue that holds people together and enables us to work side by side even when we are very different.
But the most important kind of trust, the one that we unfortunately seldom listen to, is the kind that we already possess. And that’s the trust in ourselves. An abiding belief that we already know most of what we are looking for.
As we read and look and pepper the universe with questions, while riding buses, walking mountain trails or waiting for the dryer to stop spinning at the laundromat, we seem to keep forgetting that when an answer comes; when a pain or regret begins to fade through resolution, the answer that brought the relief came from within. Even if the words or at least some of them initially came from another, how those words were processed, how they were translated into the ancient human code that unlocks who we are and how we feel, was all being done by us. Time and again, what we needed, to stop the tears or find the joy or solve the puzzle of who will love us, was inside all along, waiting to be accepted and listened to.
In the end, trust is that resilient and time-affirmed connection to the universe, that comes with no long-distance charges and zero monthly fees. It’s right there waiting to be activated.
As the sun began to go down and my small study became filled with shadows, and the leaves being blown in through the open sliding doors, my cat and I reflected on what had just taken place. What did we just experience? She yawned, stretched and fell asleep. I sat down and started typing.
There aren’t 10 ways to a more fulfilling life or 5 surefire methods to financial success. There’s only an endless thirst and curiosity, born out of some primordial desire to not go backwards I suppose, that drives us to improve and get better. And in truth, there’s nothing wrong with that intention, it’s honest.
The problem, as I see it, is that we tend to grab hold of quick fixes and finite numbers, provided by others who apparently have achieved it all, already. Ready-made solutions, like dinners, for those with an active lifestyle and too much to do. Read whatever you like or whatever quantity you desire. Listen to everyone that makes sense and makes you laugh or think. But in the end, when all that data has been downloaded and you’re ready to process the information, it’s you who’ll be making the final decision. It always has been.
So, take a moment. Sit down in a comfortable chair. Close your eyes. Breath until the noise without starts to diminish and the noise within becomes a non-issue and ask yourself a simple question. Any question.
How am I doing?
How do I feel today?
What should I do next?
And don’t let the noise answer it for you. Don’t let the constant dialogue going on inside your head, take hold of the question and make it, its own. Wait. Ask it again. The answer will come and when it does, it’ll be the only one you need to hear.
