For a little while, it feels like success when we achieve instant comfort, predictability, and stability. We get to go for coffee at lunchtime on the weekend; we get to fall asleep in front of the television in the evenings, not really watching anything that we're watching at all; we get to have food delivered to our door so we don't have to go out (or be questioned about what we've ordered) we get to drink or eat without conscience because we deserve it.
And so the wages come in, and the wages go out, and we buy things, and we're comfortable, and we're done, and for a little while, it feels nice, and then the sadness creeps in.
Creating a stable life with no excitement, no interruption, and no bumps in the road takes someone very strong and very good to live like that with happiness for a long period of time.
For the rest of us, life means living at least a bit.
We need excitement and disappointment, challenge and disaster, wonder terror, all of those things added together; a degree of unpredictability that means we're not sure what will happen today, or even the day after, or the month after, or the year after.
If you don't know what I mean, then perhaps you will if you click this video by Alan Watts - one of my favourite ever guys on the internet, one of the cleverest, most beautiful speakers you'll ever find. It's part of a longer discussion that he had, but it's beautifully well-presented and explained in 3 minutes here.
Comfort is a crisis; it's a false god; okay for a little while, but a slow death, really - life is for a living.
Blog Post Number - 4155