Australia and the World Past and Present

Our fundamental suffering in the world stems from this – we don’t accept things as they are in the present moment.

We want things that we don’t presently have.

Or we want to get rid of something that we do have.

We consider that our current condition is not right or not optimal. We feel that it could be better in some way.

We feel that there is something missing and that we won’t be fully satisfied until we get it.

If only, if only…

The world in inherently full of change. Things are changing all the time. The idea that we arrange things exactly the way we want them, all the time, is a strange idea when we think about it for a while.

So many things are outside of our control. They not determined by us. They are determined by others or the world in general.

In today’s world we are told that we can have any position if only we work hard enough for it. Well, we can’t. Because this is not fully within our control.

We can determine our own actions to some extent. And that’s about it. We can make decisions. We can act in a positive way or we can act in a negative way. We can make decisions about our own life that increase or maximise the probability that we will get what we want.

For example. If you decide to join a football club and train diligently you will increase your chances of playing professional football. You can watch what you eat. You can get go to bed early and rise early. You can make sure that you get enough sleep and that your body gets the rest that it needs. This still doesn’t guarantee an outcome.

In today’s society we are told that we can have it all. Well, we can’t. It is a dangerous idea because if we believe it we can wear ourselves out trying to attain it.

We are told that one job is not sufficient. That we also need ‘side hustles’. That we need to ‘ market’ and ‘sell’ ourselves as if we were products on a shelf rather than human beings.

Accepting this kind of thinking produces people who are perpetually stressed. Perpetually sleep-deprived, people carrying a mental load too big for their shoulders.

People invest their time going to self-improvement seminars. They believe that they are not successful enough and that they need a further ‘edge’. And they think that afterwards they will be better than they are. But they often end up in a worse state, feeling worse than they did before.

This is not to say that one should not try to improve. In fact we should. We should take steps that lead us in the right direction. We can still have goals and make plans to achieve them, but in the meantime, we should not feel that we are ‘less than’. We should not feel insufficient or unworthy.

Most religions or spiritual traditions tend to emphasise simplicity or even poverty. This is the case with Christianity too. It is ironic that in some places around the world where Christianity is strongest, the drive to accumulate and have more is the strongest.

Simplicity has become a scarcity in today’s modern world. There is a certain happiness in greater simplicity. And we know it through our own experience.

Have a think about what you can do to simplify your life. It may help you be more effective in your every day life. The more things you do, the less amount of time you have to dedicate to anyone of them. Can you do 20 things as well as you can do 10? Double the amount of things that you do and you halve the time you have available to dedicate to any of them. You will have to prioritise and make decision about what are the most important things in your life. Choose a couple of things in your life that you want to dedicate your precious time and energy to.

Yes, sometimes less in more.