Finding the point
What if money was not object? – Alan Watts
If you ask me, the best moment in life is lucid, unprovoked realization that suddenly strikes, out of blue. The one that lasts a tiny fraction of a second, yet I will abide it for a lifetime.
Recently I experienced one, powerful and deep beyond measure. So simple and obvious, making me wonder why I wasn’t aware of it before. I finally understood what many of us are fighting for on a daily basis – it’s not the money that makes the difference.
I’ve been wanting to change something, do a big, radical, 180-degree life change for over a decade – but I never took any action. There were sporadic, brief episodes shining some light, but fading away even quicker, like a shooting star, useless to remember. After every brief adventure of rebellion, I’d quickly get back to the grind, for a fast monetary shot.
What if I had all the money at my disposal? Would my life make more sense? Would I be happier, more content, having a lasting and deep sense of fulfillment? For a brief moment, probably, but in the long run – I highly doubt it.
In such moments, realizing we’ve almost exclusively lived for ‘something’, sacrificing now for those days when we finally reach it, only to learn that ‘something’ is not a goal worth dying for, but merely a byproduct of living and finding the true self – how should we feel?
It’s a bittersweet feeling. Initial, rather bitter taste of life of failure is quickly replaced with amazingly sweet, long-lasting aftertaste of self-realization and determination to change myself – the core of not who I am, but of what I’ve become over the course of unforgiving time.
Only by doing so I will be able to regain and keep joy, satisfaction and motivation as a basis of my currently scattered life. As a result it will turn me into more pleasant, interesting and lovable, happy person. Financial prosperity will follow as a logical course of changes en route.
This is, for sure, probably the most important unprovoked epiphany I’ve ever had.
Luka Pensa
26 February 2014