Imagine if someone told you that the secret to living a fulfilling and meaningful life is to abandon hope? That all of those self-help books showing you how to achieve ultimate happiness were a con, and that living a fulfilling and meaningful life comes from experiencing all that life throws at us – be it sadness or exhilaration?
To begin with, I found the concept hard to swallow too. But when you think about it, it all makes sense.
In ‘The Happiness Trap’, Dr Russ Harris talks about how convincing ourselves we’d be happier if we were a better person, or were to find a better mate or job, sets us up to feel like a failure because we’ll never met our extremely high expectations. The likelihood is when we get our ‘dream job’, we’ll be disappointed and will swiftly move onto the next thing that can make us ‘happy’. This is the happiness trap.
I can really relate to this and can recall thinking to myself on many occasions ‘if only I could get a better job, everything would be great’, as if having a better job would change everything.
Similarly in ‘When Things Fall Apart’, author Pema Chodron tells readers to abandon hope. ‘No!’ I hear you cry. Well, think about it. Why not? Of course there’s nothing wrong with having aspirations, but why not focus on the moment we’re living in (which is real)?
One thing I have struggled with in Chodron’s book, though, is the notion that security doesn’t exist. For me, security is the be all and end all; I want to be with someone I feel secure with and I want to know where I’m going in life.
But recently I’ve learnt how quickly things can change – and how that security I thought I had actually wasn’t security at all. I suppose what it’s taught me is that feeling secure has to come from within. Otherwise, your world can be turned upside down when you realise the person – or the things – that made you feel secure is no longer there.
What do you think?
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