I wonder if you recognize this (but my guess is that you do).

Let’s say you’re just living your daily life, caught up in heavy problematic thoughts and endless limiting stories, feeling dense and challenged, when this realization suddenly hits you:

None of this is really important, life is way too precious to waste it on endless worrying about useless and temporary things!!

Out of nowhere, you get an exhilarating sense of all the hours you’ve spent on things that don’t really matter, and the time that may still be available for you on this planet, and somehow you just know there must be a different way to go about this.

Life MUST be lived fully!

It’s a very promising, even liberating notion.

All of a sudden, you acknowledge the beauty and shortness of human existence, you recall what made you happy in the past, and you fully appreciate the importance of the simpler things like love, connection, beauty, and curiosity.

Life should be an amazing adventure, and it doesn’t even have to be about big gestures all the time, because the smaller stuff is just as magical.

It’s such a waste of time to be angry and frustrated and jealous, and to be constantly concerned with the future or lost in the past.

No more!

What if you simply stop wasting your energy on unimportant stuff, on superficial stuff, on stuff that is not about honoring your wonderful, but short stay on earth?

At that moment it feels good, it’s like a door has opened and light starts pouring in.

More, you need more of that, and you need to drop the endless ruminating and striving and judging and stressing!

And just when you’re almost floating in your new amazing future, a couple of minutes after the first thought hit you, here comes the other side of this realization, and now you become overwhelmed.

Where to start?

How do you deliberately love every second of your life?

Shouldn’t you take care of many things before you can even do this?

And how do you actually drop the limiting, habitual mental crap and invite the gratitude and authentic inspiration that can guide you towards fulfillment?

Fuck.

It’s ironic, really.

It’s ironic because a beautiful aha-moment quickly gets crushed by the same routine that creates all the trouble and constantly grabs your attention, and makes life look like an endless string of problems.

Now you start worrying about not worrying anymore, and the idea of traveling through life in a much lighter, more appreciative way, becomes an impossible task, a burden.

At this moment the mind has fully joined the party and starts throwing questions at you that mess up the delicious, promising, open energy of the moment.

Where do you start, what do you do, how do you do it, and what if you do it wrong?

How about other people, your job, and REALITY?!

Within five minutes you went from bad to amazing and back to bad again.

Before even starting your amazing new life, the doorway is already blocked.

To me, this is just one of those situations that prove the utter powerlessness of logic.

Even if you know very well that you’re wasting valuable time on endless mental wrestling, you keep doing it.

Even though you know that life is very short, that it’s waiting for you out there to dive in and embrace it and innocently play around with it, you keep thinking small and you stay defensive.

You can’t force yourself into appreciation.

You can’t fight yourself into joy and contentment.

You can’t plan your way into spontaneity and curiosity.

And you most certainly can’t think yourself out of a suffocating mental habit.

This morning I had the enlightening realization I’m talking about.

The ‘Oh my God, let’s cut the crap and skip the bullshit and start dancing in the street!’.

Right after that, I was confronted with the predictable pressure of ‘Okay, sure, but how to make it work, FAST, before it’s too late and your life is over!’.

I just didn’t buy into that second phase.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve seen over and over again, it’s that a liberated life comes from less engagement with thinking, not more.

The feeling of openness and happiness you’re looking for (and that is secretly promised by the mind all day long), is not the result of any activity, it’s not a reward for good behavior, and it’s not a future destination.

It’s here, right here, and that’s a monster of a cliché, but it’s true.

And I get it if these words drive you crazy, and I’m sorry for stating the obvious, but let me ask you this:

If it can’t be now, then when?

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(Photo by @aaqiibrasool, for Unsplash)