A little over a year ago I was bored with life. It seemed the same day in and day out.  There were hiccups and struggles, but they were the same hiccups and struggles.  There were fun times but they were all a blur.  Nothing seemed to be changing or growing or developing into anything.  All I could think about was, “if this were my last day on this earth – would this life be enough?  Could I truly look at my life and say I did the best I could?”  The answer was “No, but what are you going to do about it?”  It was a hard answer, a scary answer.  What could I do about it?  I wasn’t rich or single.  I had responsibilities and of course, I’d never want to let down everyone’s expectations of me.  Yet still, I had to wonder about my expectations of me, they were important too.  Slowly they kept creeping into my thoughts and dreams, gnawing away at my daily life, slowly dissipating the illusion that I was truly content with what I had created.

If I had to guess, I would say this went on for years actually.  Yet time has a way of passing so quickly, and I noticed I wasn’t the only one in this conundrum. I have friends who have said the same thing, “I know I should be doing something different with my life, but what can I do?” And with that, they stay where they are because of fear, and a year or two or three just flies by and still they wonder, “what can I do?”.  It makes me so disheartened to think about how motivated we are by fear or pain (or avoidance of pain) instead of looking at the life experience in toto.  Some of us may be successful to avoid the pain of being in poverty.  Some may eat to avoid the pain of life and/or relationships.   Some do nothing altogether, afraid to experience anything because it might bring pain.  Yet I find that motivation through fear is a complex and most undesirable way to live.  I know the biggest fear for me was disappointing others.  I knew I would be judged by my success or my failure.  Failure is the worst “f” word in my book, or at least it was.

When I took the first steps into the unknown, it was with fear of the “f” word.  It carried me through, hoping to avoid the pain of judgment and failing at others expectations.  And yet, it was exactly what was drawn to me and I was forced to see things from a different perspective.  To fear the “f” word meant to invite it into my life.  I’ve noticed fear is like a magnet that draws to you exactly what you don’t want.  It’s interesting when you are in the midst of high volume fear and pain what it will do for your strengths and weaknesses.  Your weaknesses become very visible, but so do your strengths.  When the illusion of who you are and where life is taking you begins breaking down around you, it doesn’t leave much wiggle room.  You either wallow in your pain and exacerbate your fear, or you let it go and accept and plan (as best you can) for the path ahead of you.

It’s an interesting shift in perspective.  If you take away the judgment and duality of an event, just like saying it was “good” or “bad” or “positive” or negative”, all your left with is the event itself, the experience.  It becomes like any uneventful and ordinary event because it’s not charged with your emotion.  I imagine it like a boat.  You have a boat – what’s your worst fear?  I would think sinking!  So all of a sudden the fear becomes a reality and the boat is taking in water.  You can bring buckets of water in the boat and help it sink faster or you can look at it as just an experience to learn, to use all your tools to either fix the boat or create a raft, to move on to new waters and take with you the new experience and lesson.  Spiritual masters have taught that there is no good or bad, that you should not run from pain and you should release fear.  That a “painful” moment should be encountered just like any other moment – there’s no need to run from it. Every moment has significance. It’s whether you choose to see it or not – ride the wave so to speak and see where it takes you.  I used to think that detachment sounded sad, how can you detach, would you still feel joy?  Yes, you can still feel joy even in pain by recognizing that pain and joy is in the mind of the beholder – you are the creator of your world.  If you label it as pain or fear, it is pain or fear.  If you label it as joy and bliss, it is joy and bliss.  If you label it a lesson, it’s a lesson.  We have such a hard time just being, just experiencing and just being.  I’m not even sure if I can comprehend what that means to just be, but I’m hoping someday it will be clearer.

I wonder what this world would be like if we recognized that the physical world is like a dream.  One day we will wake up and realize, there was never anything to be afraid of, we were the creators of our nightmare or our blissful sleep.   If we could acknowledge this, maybe we would find it less appealing to feel the need to go at life alone, to be so individual and different.  When in reality, we’re not different, we’re so similar.  I encounter so many people who are dealing with the same issues, the same struggles – why are they so alone?  Why can’t they come together and help each other?  It’s insane to feel how connected we all are, to know how much we all long for that connectedness, for understanding, for companionship, compassion and love and yet we have such a strong fear of coming together and merging our lives – to support each other.   We turn our backs on each other when that fear and pain creeps in because we have to “think about ourselves and find our own happiness.”  The funny (or not so funny) part is, happiness seems to elude the majority of us, so maybe it’s time to rethink the strategy.

I’m hoping when I wake up, I can look back at the beauty of the dream, learn from it and be able to say, “I experienced to the fullest that I could, without fear, without judgment and maybe even without pain (I’m working on that one and maybe a little of the fear too).” More than ever, I hope that we all will do that.  I imagine what it would be like to support each other in the experiences of life instead of propagating from the deepest depths of fear. Maybe one day we can overcome this and learn to understand and create from the deepest depths of love – that would be a world worth dreaming for.