Being Happy Amid the Chaos

People sometimes wonder how I can maintain a positive attitude when it appears that the world is falling apart all around me. When you walk around not constantly in a depressed and angry mood, sometimes people notice that. Some probably suspect that I am drugged or have a hidden agenda of some kind that keeps me smiling.

I get angry, sometimes damned angry, yet I can still move forward after I’ve looked on the anger and let it pass through.

Why? Perspective

I’ve learned that the story of civilization is the story of one society after another. They begin, grow, and then die. Always. The only difference now is that we have the ability to take this world out when we do.

I’ve also learned to see, really see, that I won’t be on this earth forever. And when I die, all of the things that I think are so necessary now will fall away - and that doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in an afterlife. As Solomon put it in the book of Ecclesiastes, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity and a striving after the wind.” (That books was written after he studied the state of mankind “under the sun”.) I have found that when you think of your own death, you find that a lot of things that we are told are important are not. Instead, they are a waste of time and a creator of sick minds.

What I meam by sick minds is that you chase fame and fortune for it’s own sake. When someone does that, they start off with a false premise - the only thing that matters is I have weatlh and power. From that point it is spiral downward:

The need to believe you are great means that you must constantly feed your ego. You do things not because you need them, but because you crave your drug. You need to show yourself as great person, better than anyone else, so you constantly build more wealth and power, no matter the cost. You become blind to anything that isn’t part of that goal - and the goal never ends. There is always someone who might be a threat to you, always someone who it richer, someone who people respect more and worhip more. The list goes on.

Following the path of power to it’s end causes you to be deaf, dumb, and blind to anything but getting more of your fix. I think that addiction is far worse than any drug, for it truly destroys the mind.

The irony of it all is that you can do all of those things, yet the moment you die they fall away. If there is no afterlife, you die just like that deer that got hit by a car. And the moment that happens people lose contact with the living, breathing, self that you were when you were living. If you are fortunate, some knowledge of who you were and what you did persists for a little while, but even then it is irrelevant. Why? Because the being that did those things is gone.

If there is an afterlife where we are all judged, then all of the evil you did to gain wealth and power will be judged, for a creator of the universe cannot be bought. Every person whose life you destroyed, every dream crushed, every evil done to someone else for the sake of your greatness will be judged and paid for.

Getting back to me, I have found that I will never be perfect. There will never be external conditions that will make be happy. That comes from inside; from learning to look at what I do and understand it. That give me some wisdom to choose what is really important - Love for myself and other people. I see my mistakes, can learn from them, and forgive myself.

That keeps my heart open to love others and to love myself. Fear vanishes when you do that.

Duane