“We don’t always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail… We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart.” –Julie Cameron
We live in a world plagued with denial. Rather than being honest with ourselves and others we claim we are fine, it’s everyone else that is the problem. Other people need to change, not us. Something outside of ourselves must happen before we can be happy.
So we play the waiting game, going through our days denying that we have to do anything at all to make our life better. Or even better than that, we do more and more, more work, more eating, more drinking, and more activities in what ends up being a futile attempt at achieving happiness. Outwardly we are playing the part of someone having a great life, yet inside we are dying a slow death… and we don’t even know it yet.
We end up on the treadmill of life running after something that is not outside us at all. As we learn to acquire and accumulate all those things that bring moments of “joy” we need to acquire and accumulate more, because the joy never seems to last.
Sound familiar?
Believing that everything is outside of you–the source of your happiness, your problems, your anger, your joy, your fears, and even love–is like living in a cage of illusion. We are trapped by a false belief that we are not responsible for what we are feeling, saying, doing or living. It’s out of our control and so therefore we do not have to take ownership or responsibility. Of course, this is extreme and we all have moments of assuming personal responsibility because we cannot deny it.
What would life took like however, if we realized that we are in fact responsible for our lives and that this realization could bring us out of our cage of illusion and bring us a sense of personal freedom. So that no matter what our current path in life, our social status, our place of birth, the body we were born with, or who are parents were we can live a life of health and happiness.
We are not always in control of what happens around us but we are always in control of what happens within us, and assuming that level of control takes assuming 100% responsibility. It’s all up to you. Realize this and your world will never be the same.
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