Lose Your Expectations
“We all love to win, but who loves to train” -Mark Spitz, 1972; If you want to live a real life, lose your irrational expectations of what it is, and just live the best life you can live. Sure, that sounds like advice, but really it is an “empty” warning to all who want reality over fantasy, rationality over irrationality or to be a type B personality instead of a type A personality.
The training a real life entails is nothing short of hard punishment of sorts, but you have the satisfaction of living what is real like eating the “bad tasting”, but good for you Post Shredded Wheat cereal, versus the “good tasting” but bad for you Post Fruity Flinstones Pebbles cereal full of sugar and preservatives that are really bad. (I know, in my last two articles, I am using a good and bad breakfast cereal metaphor of sorts, but, stick with me if you do want a real and rational life that works, you will get one.)
I think of the title of author George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff final work “Life is real only then, when “I am””, when I think of the only way to really be is healthy and honest and that is hard in this world full of irrational “easy ways” and phony pleasures that genuinely lead to nothing but the grave, right down to cocaine and smoking. Genuine pleasures in life take hard work and are like the “eye of the needle to achieve” in reality, but when you do they are even more satisfying in a sense because they are earned and I can honestly say that a rational immortality is even harder because the attitude of most people is “If we cannot have our irrational fun, what would we do forever?” Thus, cycles of irrationality and death happen in this world in the name of “fun”. Destructive wars are fun for Generals, and Leaders, sure, but what about all those who get killed and pay for it all as “foot soldiers” and the truly miserable people who do all the grunt work and mess for all those who “get the glory”?
Like I said, genuine rationality is mostly hard work and honesty with yourself, the pleasure comes after you get it done right, and earn it all right instead of “taking shortcuts” that are irrational, but immediately “fun” until they genuinely destroy you somehow. A good reality is earned, not given, that is my bottom line in this article, and you need to “hunker down” and do the work to get it. Thank you.
