Man cannot remake himself without suffering for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could decide we want to change, and as easily as hitting Command Z on our keyboards, all that we did not like was instantly undone?
If change were not so cathartic, would it in fact, be change at all?
Imagine for a moment a world in which you and everyone else had the ability to change everything and anything any time and at any moment.
You look in the mirror one day and decide you want to change everything. Looks, height, hair, facial features, nationality, pigmentation, sexual orientation or any other tiny or massive detail of your choosing.
You want to know things, you want to forget things, you want to try things, see things, experience things.
You want possessions, and change where you live, and change what your job is.
Every last detail about your reality is up for grabs. All the time. Every last day.
And then what?
Do we become experience junkies and live a life of constant fantasies, wishes and dreams realized?
How long will that remain fulfilling?
Every day you wake up and you can be, do, see, and experience any and every last thing you want.
Would you be happier?
Would that happiness be sustainable? And if so, for how long?
When does it finally peak and start to turn into an episode of The Twilight Zone? When does Rod Serling walk around the corner and describe your blissful existence that ultimately becomes the greatest prison of them all?
Or is it truly paradise?
If every last human being on Earth were capable of shape shifting their reality to suit their purposes all the time, would we ultimately be a happier, more content specie? To envision such a dynamic, we are all masters of the universe in our own dream world. In that world, all that I share above is possible. So if you were continually living a dream in which everyone was saying, doing, acting, attracting, engaging and playing as you desire, then you have full control of reality.
Or is it perhaps a false promise of happiness because part of what truly makes life in this 3 Dimensional playground called Earth compelling, is playing the hand we are dealt? I would argue that it is the circumstances in which we are operating that govern our potential for satisfaction in life. Even when many of them are not going in our favor. It is the knowledge that we do have the skills, power, ability, desire, and motivation to make things improve that creates the deepest satisfaction in life, even if at face value it appears far less fantastical than living a life in which our ID is continuously served all of its hedonistic desires.
Sculpting ourselves is a delicate art form. We go too far and it hurts. We do too little and we continue to suffer. Sometimes the harder and more deliberately that we sculpt, the more pain we put ourselves through.
But in the end, we reap the benefits of what we have sewn. And isn’t that truly the meaning of life?
Happy Sunday!