The most happy thought, strangely enough, is the thought that there is no way to be happy. And that the reason for it is that the babysitter can never be good enough.
The babysitter can be drugs or alcohol, it can be a belief in divine hand-holding, it can be a relationship, it can be hard shopping or hard work and many other things. It's whatever we do to feel more safe and comfortable, to distract ourselves, to feel more secure. And it's never good enough.
It's not good enough because we find that we're still beset with suffering from time to time. We think this shouldn't happen in life if we could only do it right. Yet we still have times of insecurity or disappointment or pain or whatever. Life isn't quite right yet.
So we try harder. We do more. We travel to more places or collect moreobjects or money or experiences, or reach for handholding by someone or something.
Whatever we do, we're still trying to get somewhere. It's not good enough right here, right where we are. We just know it's happening better somewhere else, some other way, or that the better me is going to arrive soon. It's not quite right yet.
And it never will be. Why? Because it's a hopeless task, and suddenly we see this. We never will be able to escape insecurity and doubt and suddenly we see this. We realize that there will always be joy and suffering, beauty and tragedy, light and darkness in our life. We see that that is just the nature of life.
Then, realizing this utter hopelessness, the utter futility of this merry-go-round we're on to get it "better," we decide to meet life with open arms exactly as it is. However it wants to present itself, we want it to present itself that way. Because then we've fallen in love.
With what? With it. With just the way it is. With just the sheer tragic beauty of it, the dualistic, paradoxical, absurd but gorgeous song. The melody of it, just the way it is.
Then when disappointment, loss, pain and so on come, we just sit with them. This takes courage, because there's no babysitter in it. We allow ourselves to just be there with whatever is there, like an old friend. No resistance, except when there is, and then we open to that too.
We see what a hypocrite we've been, because everything that we've accused others of doing we've also been doing ourselves. We think so-and-so shouldn't over-react, say, and then we see how we've been overreacting. Or we accuse someone of not listening and then we see how we haven't been listening.
We see that there's this mirror from existence going on all the time. What we perceive out there is what's within.
And we see that there's no security anywhere. Everything we've relied on, all the babysitters that we've used over the years just don't quite do it. And we see that.
And as a beginning we allow ourselves to just sit there with it all and embrace it all and fall in love with it all, no matter where it goes, no matter how it goes—we're there with it finally, just wanting it to go where it goes, and we're there with it, and are it, and it is us, and there's only one of it.
And even that notion, like all thoughts and beliefs, is a projection. We realize that the world is a projected movie that we're watching, a virtual reality of unimaginable complexity and realism. And that underneath this virtual reality is nothing. Exactly nothing, like empty space, a nothing which is also everything.
And seeing this utter hopelessness, this tragic beauty, this emptiness behind all things and the utter necessity of life being the way it is, we fall in love with it, just as it is. And suddenly our heart breaks open in tears of gratitude and compassion and joy.
—jim sloman, summer 2000 for Aug 16
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