Losing or winning?

                                                            (National Geographic)

A man was walking home and observed that a woman was unceasingly looking for something on the grass, below a lamppost. Intrigued by what the woman was doing, he approaches her with the intention to help and asked: “Excuse me, do you need help?” “Yes, I have lost my house keys” she replies. So, the man starts searching with her. After a long while of searching with no results, the man inquires: “Are you sure you lost the keys on this spot?” The woman replies “Yes. I dropped the keys on the opposite street.” With great surprise, the man says “so, why are you looking for the keys here instead of searching in front?” “I search for them here because it is lighter, I know this place better, and it is more comfortable.” (Hindu tale - Jaime Jaramillo)

When in the search for happiness, we follow what our knowledge indicates as being functional. Sometimes the results of our search make us feel alive, centered, good, and let us build on the future. However, many other times, our search lets us get away with unhealthy behavioral and emotional patterns, in which the available and visible mental tools tend to be learned mechanisms, rules, and social expectations that respond to fears and that have silently been editing our lives and our encounters.

Appealing to what it is available and seems to be functioning is a safe and self-justifiable resource that prevents us from getting lost into the unknown, which can make us face the uncomfortable mirror of what we can discover inside us, and we also avoid dealing with the success that could overwhelm our structures.

We can clearly hear that something is making noise in us. Anyway, we let unhappiness gets empowered to sink its claws and circularly generate deeper feelings of frustration and discomfort. We realize something is missing but we are not at disposition to get in deeper touch with ourselves, our past, and our present. We negate our reality with activities, things, and disengaged attitudes so as to diminish the pain. However, when we never stop to feel if we are making decisions from our true desires and genuine freedom, we are backfiring at our integrity and sense of completeness and wholeness. Why do we overlook if we know we are numbing our happiness? Why do we make decisions that sooner or later will make us suffer? Why do we unconsciously prefer suffering?

Knowledge comes to rescue us and make us feel the adrenaline of the winners, so it turns harder to detect that we are living on aphrodisiacs that are silently hurting our long lasting well being and fostering a fake encounter with authentic success. In our internal fight, our defense mechanisms win and our fears placate bringing a sense of tranquility. However, "this tranquility" is just emotional freedom somnolence that meticulously kidnaps our desires to sabotage our capability of making happier choices. What can impede us from boycotting our happiness?

It is vital to awaken from the somnolence and confront our guiding standards and put them to trial. These mechanisms work best in darkness and only crystallize when faced and chased in brave, deep, and fearless manners. How often do we question our judgments, our views, our perspectives, our sensations away from the surface and more in connection with a genuine search that will let us authentically embrace what makes us feel truly alive and well?

Happiness and success are composed by many other factors such as health, enthusiasm for life, integrity, authentic relationships, inner sense of peace and prosperity, wisdom, freedom, creative power, social, emotional and psychological stability. The commitment to these ideals give our personal stories direction and focus, protection, trust, and reassurance that we are feeding the real us.

Surely, a genuine search powerfully pushes unexplored emotions and inner places that inexorably will revolutionize our life and our set ways of dealing with desires. This search will probably make us shake and doubt when transitioning through the darkness but, as we go deeper, the pillars of our true happiness will become visible and will give us the security of having found stable ground and full power against unhappiness and mediocrity. Most probably, this search won't give place to recrimination for what we missed to live, failed to love, or feared to face; on the contrary, it will give us the tranquility of mind and heart essential to feel deliciously complete.

Are we being the creators of our happiness or are we editors that obediently unvoice our true desires? Are we losing or winning against our fears?

“The same mechanisms that produce excitement also produce fear, and any fear can be transformed into excitement by breathing into it. On the other hand, excitement turns into fear quickly if you hold your breath…as a physical tool of denial.” (Fritz Perls & Gay Hendricks)

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