Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Alice: I don't much care where. The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go. Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere. The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough. - Lewis Carroll
This quote has always stood out to me. In the book, Alice in Wonderland Alice has become lost in the forest and asks the Cheshire cat for directions. As you can see she didn't get the answer she was hoping for.
I don't know about you, but I've been like this my entire life. Never really sure where to go. Never really sure what I'm doing. I always felt like I was in someone else's video game, more an NPC than the player.
I went through life doing exactly what was expected of me. Tried college after high school and dropped out. Worked full time. Got in a relationship. Moved out. Broke up. Serious injury. Back to school again.
Of course, that is just the cliff notes version of my life, but I imagine if we distill many of our lives down it may look like something similar. But it's the detail that matters. It's the details that we agonize over every day. Which relationships didn't work out. Where we live. What job we have. We are so focused on the story that we don't see the forest for the trees.
Trust me, I'm no different. In between the lines of my life are suicide attempts, abusive relationships, out of control depression and anxiety, serious injury that affected the course of my life... I get it. I've been there. To be honest... I'm still there in a lot of ways. I wake up each morning and some part of me wishes for everything to be changed: My job, my house, where I live, what I'm doing, how much money I make. This stuff isn't new or different from anyone else on the planet. But the fact that we are all suffering from the same sickness should be raising some red flags.
I think society, and the planet, are feeling it. Things aren't okay. We can't go on living the way that we have been taught is how we are supposed to live. In the U.S. I am entrenched in a society that tells me that I must work for a company that I must make a lot of money, and anything less than pulling myself up by my bootstraps means I'm a worthless piece of garbage.
Do you feel that?
We are telling people that their contribution to society isn't enough unless they fit one mold. That people who find the idea of working all day inside a poorly lit office inside a cubical insane that they shouldn't make an attempt to be happy.
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life.” - John Lennon
I think John Lennon had it right. We have all been looking at what society wants from us and attempting to find happiness outside ourselves. We drink to forget. We smoke to forget. We have an opiate epidemic not because people are in more pain, but because they are trying to escape the pain of their own lives. Don't believe me? Here is a study about "Rat Park."
We are all so caught up in our additions, whether it's drugs, food, or television, that we can't even admit something is wrong. We go on Facebook when we feel lonely and want connection instead of reaching out to someone tangible. We eat when we're not hungry else we have to feel something inside of us that may be uncomfortable. We watch hour after hour of television because it's the only way we can quiet our ever racing minds. Well, I know that all of that was true for me anyway.
My point is this: we are all looking in the wrong place for what will bring us the contentment, happiness, and joy that we are all seeking every day. I'm not one day going to find the perfect job that will fillful my every need. I'm not going to one day find a partner who knows exactly what I want and need in every moment of the day. I'm not going to stuff myself with food and expect to feel good afterward. These are all just poorly wrapped bandaids that quickly come off and expose the wound underneath, which makes us try to wrap it up again.
What I propose is trying something different-- something radical. Maybe we should try living from the inside out. It's within us that we can find our greatest happiness and joy. We can learn to live in our truth and stop denying the things that bring us exactly what we're looking for: happiness. Think about it, we have the compacity right now for the kind of joy and excitement we would have if we found out we won the PowerBall. Imagine it. It sure felt real for a moment didn't it?
We don't have to wait for something arbitrarily good to happy for us to be happy. We can choose to be happy right now.
I guess this is just a long way of saying that life is more than mimsy. Life can be more than mimsy if we allow it to be. But it's a choice we have to make. To stand in the truth of who we are or to continue searching for something outside of us to make us happy.
The choice is yours. The choice is always available to you. We can choose as many times as we must to stand in our own happiness and joy. Each time we breathe in... we have another opportunity to chose.
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