In pursuit of happiness? Welcome to most of the rest of the world. You’ve probably heard of a bunch of self-help resources out there about the various techniques, questionnaires, and workshops you can check out your specific issue blocking you from happiness. But have you ever wondered where it all started going wrong?
Lets take a step back, way back into the past.
“What do you want to become after you grow up?”
How many times were you asked this question as a child? Its a question that sets a child’s imagination free – to dream about an exciting, awe-inspiring future. Its a question that also unintentionally sets the expectation that growing up means becoming something other than, perhaps more, than the person we were as a child. And THAT, according to my understanding, is the root cause of all our problems.
The process of growing up often makes us become many things, or pushes us to struggle to become all the things we think we should become – successful, attractive, powerful, strong, rich, fashionable, smart – choose your adjective. Yet, the more we go down the path of becoming, the more we start realising there is no end to it. There is always more to become, more steps to climb, more people to compete with, bigger worlds to conquer. Its a rabbit hole that sucks you into a rat race that tries to convince us that that’s all there is to life. Many people don’t wake up from it, don’t see or care to see a world outside it. But there are those who come to see past the facade of busyness and achievements, those who acknowledge the nagging sense of discomfort growing in the back of their mind and decide to understand it. And therein begins a petrifying journey that brings up questions such as –
“Does life ever get easier?”
“What is the point of life?”
“Which is the right path for me?”
“Will I ever find a place I belong in, in this world?”
Going down the spiral these questions lead us to often causes a lot of tension and disapproval from our family and friends. They may write it off as overthinking or they may be too busy earning a living to sit and discuss about such existential questions. Its common for people to discuss such deep questions, complain about the way the world is structured, theorize what needs to be ‘fixed’ to make everything better, and then after all the discussion, get back onto the hamster wheel. I myself did that for years. After all, what can one person do about it? And who likes a constant complainer anyway?
But for a rare few, once the door has been opened, there is no going back. Life, and their own mind will push them to go deeper down the path of questioning. Being ‘practical’ or ‘normal’ just does not work anymore and now a new set of questions might come creeping in –
“What the f**k is wrong with me?”
“Why the hell am I so messed up?”
“When am I going to stop feeling so damn lonely?”
From my experience, these questions lead people down several paths, to several conclusions. Some turn to God, some to science, and some become cynical. I’ve tried all of them and have found one underlying, expansive answer that goes well with any or all of those paths. Let me save you a bunch of time and heartache and give you the answer right now.
Its not about becoming. The path to happiness is in the UNBECOMING.
The way out of this cycle of confusion, self-hatred and numbness is not in becoming ‘more’ or ‘better’ or ‘normal’, but in unbecoming, in de-conditioning, in undoing all the knots inside you that had been twisted into being by the assumptions and expectations the world had taught you into following.
Ok., but how do we ‘un-become’?
That’s one complex, thrilling rollercoaster ride, the biggest adventure of all, and I am going to share the various aspects of it in my next blog posts. Hope these breadcrumbs guide you back to your radiant, beautiful self, and into the real happily-ever-after that unbecoming brings with it.