It often seems to us that a step separates us from happiness, or rather, one small obstacle. Here, take a step, remove the obstacle — and you will be satisfied with life. Nothing like this. This is a mental trap.
Living longer and longer, I noticed this thing: quite often a person is separated from the state, if not happiness, then tolerable “everything is OK” by some one thing. Remove that one and there it is. Side hurts, or blockage at work, or suddenly dandruff, or quarreled with someone, or lost something, or back to the dentist, or if it weren’t for damp December, then I would now … It seems that if I hadn’t leaned over five minutes ago unsuccessfully and would not jam the lower back, then he would only do that he fluttered and smiled. So no, it stuck. Ah, if only I didn’t bend over! Give life back for five minutes — and I will, I will love it and rejoice. Just passing through an unnecessary fork, huh? Then the lower back passes, dandruff disappears, and December smoothly flows into May. And what? Something new separates us from happiness again.
Or, for example, May, and everything blooms and sings — but after all, the tummy didn’t shrink over the winter. Every day I look at him in the mirror several times, but at least he has something. And then there’s the beach. Damn, if only I could go to the beach without this saggy belly! Well, no matter how gogol I paced! Yes, there is no dandruff, but the urticaria got out from somewhere. Ah, if not for her! “God deliver the scabies,” as one old Russian copyist of books wrote on the margins of the manuscript. Deliver — and I will be, I will be a sunny boy. And now — well, how to smile and feel the fullness of life, when is the scab, such a reptile, God forgive me.
- Sonya Lubomirski: «It’s good that happiness does not last forever»
Yes, the blockage at work was cleared up, but for some reason he agreed to a business trip, again fees-flights-hotels-new people — everything got sick. If only I had stayed at home! How could one spend these days slowly. The constancy of one thing that interferes with happiness, always present in the field of vision and distracting energy, makes me tend to think that this is an indispensable condition of life. Like gravity, against which you can protest, but it’s pointless. To wait until this one thing that separates from bliss, or at least a tolerable “OK”, will not be — it’s more expensive for yourself. Because she will always be.
This is some kind of trick of consciousness, a mental trap, the need for some unidentified subpersonality, as if, just in case, afraid of the fullness of life, in which there is no need to complain and whine. And this subpersonality fiercely resists the attempt to take the interfering thing out of the brackets — and again and again returns your consciousness to it, like a bull’s rope. And it is not clear whether to ignore this subpersonality and learn by conscious effort to feel happiness in the presence of this constant fly in the ointment, or vice versa — to listen to this subpersonality, enter into a dialogue with it, console it, explain to it the essence of the matter, stroke its head and try to understand what she needs. Here to understand only this one thing, only her — and everything will become OK …