Prodigal Son
There is a great need, especially in these fast times, to drop what I call the ‘prodigal son syndrome’. This is a combination of perfection, forged by the constant bombing of models to follow (physical, psychological, behavioural…) through the now constant connection we live in, and our innate need to be accepted.
The result ? Draining your energies and a constant sense of unsatisfaction and unhappiness. Worst, betraying yourself.
We all want to be the perfect person at all time.
When we were kids, we wanted to be the best for our parents.
Growing old, we want to do it for someone else: ideas, maybe your kids, your partner.
But there is a catch here — acting to make someone else happy can be generous, but if not done properly can be self-destructing.
Also, you will never be the prodigal son you want to be.
And this is fine!
Perfection
We all have a model of perfection in at least one aspect of our life. It can be how we should look (social media is really amazing in showing that), how we should live, spend our time, eat, dress, make sex, play an instrument…everything is a constant comparison.
Comparison can be an amazing tool in finding how to improve, but many times becomes a dependency to the others and a way of self-defeating ourselves to ‘minus than’.
There are two aspect about comparison.
Yes, you are ‘minus than’. We are. We will always be!
And the second aspect: it is totally FINE.
There is nothing wrong in not being the best. Being the last. Feeling uncertain. Feeling stupid. Feeling imperfect.
It is part of who we are!
The great lesson in perfection is ACCEPTANCE.
We are a fire, constantly changing in time, but remaining fire at the core.
Learning to follow ourselves through accepting what we are in THAT MOMENT is an enormous liberation. Freedom. Pure freedom.
‘Everything is as it should be’ it is a double-edged sword.
Acceptance is the first step towards living better in the present.
Accepting something, even if it’s bad, does not mean becoming passive towards that.
It means taking a proper relationship to what is happening by being conscious and mindful of ourselves, listening to how we feel.
Then we can act in the situation.
It is a 3 steps process:
Consciousness → Acceptance → Action
I firmly believe that our energies are out biggest treasure.
And by energies I mean the actual amount of things we can do in a day!
Every time you waste energies you lose potential of being.
In every step of this process, ask yourself: how am I wasting energies here ?
By not being conscious, you waste energy in self repeating patterns, random thoughts (many time destructive) and feel drained by that.
Try some meditation (in ANY form, it can even be riding a motorcycle) to interrupt this unblocked leak of mental energies and see the differences.
By not accepting the situation, you consciously create an internal war with what you have outside you.
It is again very easy in our time, with all this constant news of things that go for the worse, or even simply because you can’t understand how this society has become so unbalanced and inhuman (that is my personal internal battle).
Accepting these times, and feeling who you are and who you want to be in relationship to that stop another energy leakage.
Ask yourself…how useful is to NOT ACCEPT the life/event I am in ?
Be aware — NOT ACCEPTING is different than NOT ACTING.
It is all an internal game/war/struggle that influences your energies and thus your actions.
And finally…action. You can act in very different ways, and probably you need to do that depending on the situation.
In every action you do, from brushing your teeth to cook to play an instrument, code, read…how can you waste less energy in the process ?
For example when you want to play fast on the guitar, you study what is the minimum movement you need to have a clear note at a certain speed, and nothing more.
Again an economy of energy is paramount, from the micro to the macro scales.
Need to be accepted
There is something else that needs to be dropped.
The need to be accepted.
It is a very strong need we have in our society (look at the movie Revolver by Guy Ritchie to understand this concept clearly) and again social media is expanding this more and more.
The need to be accepted is like a wall: it divides us from ourselves, and as a side-effect, from the others.
Sounds counter intuitive right ?
The worst effect of blindly following this need is to betraying yourself.
Tell me there is something worse than that!
By betraying yourself, the most important person of your life, you take distance from who you are and who you can/want be.
As an incredible twist in the tale, persons around you will sense that and when becoming more close to you…feel this discrepancy.
You will attract persons that are similar to you, so persons that are not true to themselves.
Betraying yourself is the opposite of knowing yourself and taking care of yourself.
In ancient Greece there was the concept of epimeleia heautou, simply translated as ‘self care’, that was a framework from which the more known ‘know thyself’ was taken from.
Taking care of yourself does not mean to be selfish. Quite the opposite!
Again, it is the same 3 steps process we saw earlier.
Be conscious of what you feel in every moment, accept it and then act.
Becoming true to yourself is the key. Is the victory!
This is a process that will last all of your life, because being a fire, what ‘you are’ will change over time.
Don’t be attached to the idea you have of yourself!
You will create definitions of yourself during your lifetime. It is normal, it is a way of the brain to optimize the quantity of informations it needs to be aware of.
But as we change taste in food/music/anything, so WE change.
And be conscious of ourselves means be conscious of our state, and it can go against previous ideas we have of ourselves.
The more you are unconscious and betray yourself, the more the ideas you have of yourself crystallize and become fixed.
You and who around you will simply see that, and you both will lose track of who’s behind those crystallized ideas.
It is like being lost in a big wall of ice: after a certain depth you can’t see anymore who’s inside.
Being a fire implies feeling your shape/state and act accordingly.
It can be very demanding on frozen people, because they are used to see the ideas of you instead of you.
When you will start this process, many persons will not recognize you anymore.
FINALLY!
The purpose of your life
As a final note…there are many definitions of purpose of life, but the one that hit me the most is this one:
Your life’s inner purpose is primary, and your inner purpose is to awaken, to be conscious. In whatever you do, your state of consciousness is the primary factor. — Eckhart Tolle
I want to end with the purpose of life because it is really the most important takeaway of this night reflection, a note to self.
I can’t sleep, many thoughts and energies wasted in self creating patterns, fears of the future (not very stoic…) fears of not being enough, not working hard enough, not being good enough.
I am the first to live all of that.
Reminding myself that my real purpose is not my job or making someone else happy (family, partner, religion, …) but be conscious more time during the day, ease me up a lot.
That does not mean becoming a selfish person.
But just put yourself in the equation WITH the others.
When you are conscious, in any situation you act in accordance to yourself, thus the result is something that is your emanation. Maybe you will not understand how (like losing a job, to just discover that you did not like it anymore) and it will take time to know why, but surely being in tune with yourself will let you feel a lot more centered.
Play a lot better the unique instrument you are, in the orchestra of life.
Actions
This is a small list of stuff you can do to drop the prodigal son syndrome:
- Be conscious of yourself. Breathe. Feel the body. Find a tool that works for you (meditation, mindfulness, …)
- Accept, but don’t be passive. If you don’t agree, fight against that!
- Listen to your need of perfection. Learn to drop perfection to achieve something more realistic: your absolute best.
- Listen to your need to be accepted. Ask yourself: do I really want to do this ?
