If you’re miserable, angry, upset, or whatever, chances are you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick and are arguing that reality should be other than what it is. The past 80 years are marked by a profound insistence that reality is other than what it is. It probably started after WWII, when people wanted to pretend nothing happened and wanted to get on with life. Please, can things just be normal again. When children, who sensed that something bad had happened in the past, asked questions, they were effectively told that everything was fine now and that we shouldn’t dwell on the past. That created an entire generation (I wanted to write generated a generation, which shows an interesting relationship between the words and their meaning) who focus on nothing but having fun. Deny difficult things, just focus on the fun. That’s where the cascade started. And we’re still in the tail of that behavior, because their children are also very vocal about focusing on good things, but they’ve run up against reality. So now most things you see, hear or read, have reached the second layer. Instead of “Everything is good now”, which wasn’t sustainable, we’re now at “Things should be good now”, which leads to “Things shouldn’t be this way!”. This has some obvious consequences. When, today, someone points out how things are and that this is just the way it is, people start to froth at the mouth. When someone points out the truth, they are burned at the stake for telling an unwanted truth. But what if it’s just the truth? You can not-want it all you want, it’s still the truth.
If you are unhappy, it means you are holding on to a story that does not match reality. I once read that you should write your life story, or be aware that you don’t become part of someone else’s story. That’s almost it. It’s not about stories per se, at least not in the sense in which we use the word now. How we use the word story now is: Anything that is made up in order to entertain you. A good story is not necessarily true, but it’s entertaining. Except that a really good story is also true: It tells you something about reality. And so your job isn’t to find a happy story to paste over your life. Your job is to read the real story. To get in touch with reality. How things are. Not how you wish them to be. Look at yourself. Look at others. And see things as they are. It also means daring to see things you think are ugly, or undesirable to you. But that’s the only way to get free from them. What you can’t or won’t consciously see, will influence you, it will rule over you. You have to look the dragon in the eye. And call it out. Even if other people do not wish to see that reality is as it is. Men and women are as they are. Human beings are who they are. Some people just love tugging a dog’s tail and laugh when the dog gets up and walks away. Then, they tug it again, and laugh when the dog gets upset. Then, they tug the tail again, and get upset that the dog bit them.
The dog is going to bite you, if you don’t stop pulling its tail. Stop arguing against reality being the way it is. Never get upset when people behave in character. Instead, figure out how reality works. Figure out the real rules. Then relentlessly play by those rules.