What Really Matters

TB Wright

Imagine yourself laying on your deathbed, knowing you are never going to get up again. No, not to make yourself feel bad, but for the purpose of distilling what is important to you right from the story of your own life. How can we feel bad about dying anyway? We haven't experienced it yet, and it's an inevitable fact for every single one of us. So, you're on that bed and many thoughts are going through your mind. What do you imagine you are thinking that you should have done different. Good, now we'll take some more time to organize your thoughts. Okay, that's enough. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. What was that picture of things you feel you should have done? Go to it. There it is. Want a perfect life? Good. Then go do those things. All of them, and right now.

What you just might discover out of doing this process, is that there are things in life, sometimes as simple as saying to a loved one "I love you" that we withhold ourselves from doing. We fantasize that we desire to go to Mt. Everest and conquer it, or travel the globe as a rock star, but for most of us, those things will simply not get done. We will do other things, more relevant to our very real lives and more importantly, more important to us. Regardless of the dreams we want to live out, more importantly is to live out the lives we are given. We don't get to do this, when we do this withholding from our lives every day, and we do it time and again, over time. I don't know if it can be helped, but the process can certainly be helped along. Helped along to be one that is more loving to us, and to all those who we love who work and play all around us. Because the truth is, that for whatever lofty dreams we have there is really only reason we desire to attain them and that is this: to feel better. The irony is that no matter what we are doing, the laundry, the dishes, drinking a glass of water, we already have at our fingertips the ability to feel better. No matter what. Mt. Everest, or at the sink, there it is, and there we are.

Since most of us spend most of our lives not being on top of Mt. Everest, even those who have climbed it, it just might behoove us to learn what it is that we have to remove as a barrier to our experience of experiencing our lives joyfully, regardless of what we are doing. Or if not joyfully, which might in truth be a stretch for a lot of people, at the least in a way that feels better. We can do this removal of our resistance to allowing in all our good, and we can do this right now. Here are some ways:

1) There will always be situations that we do not like, or are in the middle of an upset over. Take any situation you are in and ask yourself: "Is it worth it?" Is the pain you are suffering with worth the work and effort it takes to maintain it? Because the truth is, the situation is what it is, and your upset will not change that. That makes your upset the only thing that can be changed! And the best part, it's you who have the power to enact this change right now.

2) The past is what it is. Again, something happens and we get upset over it. Or we are in pain or grief over it. Maybe there's even something like a loss of a loved one that we are grieving over, and to feel that real loss is healthy for you. But that's not all that we do, is it? We not only feel our loss, but we want our feelings to change things that won't change. And that's where the suffering comes in. What is, is, and upset will not impact that.

3) Serve somebody else. That's right, if all you did was find someone who was in a similar situation as you are, and then support them somehow (with their permission of course) in feeling better, not denying what happened, not ignoring what happened, but to simply feel better regardless of what happened, then I can guarantee that you will also be enrolled in feeling better.

4) Often people feel "as if" they are abandoning a loved one by giving up their upset over that loss. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Ironically, when we are upset, we are blocked from our authentic feelings, and so prevented from fully being with not only the truth, but with our memory of our loved one as well. Upset keeps us away from that which we love, not connected to it. The only thing we are connected to when we are upset, is our upset.

5) Give yourself a break. People just do not remind themselves to do this enough. Certainly not enough to feel better on a consistent basis. What does it mean if you're not mounting Everest in this moment? Nothing, not a thing. Not all of us have to be rock stars, and nor should all of us be rock stars. The most important person you can ever be in your lifetime is you. And that would mean, doing what you are doing right now, regardless of what it is, or how much you might want to change your circumstances. Be there first, in order to then be where you want to be. There is no other way.

6) The defining factor in allowing what is to be exactly what it is and nothing more, with no more meaning than that, is acceptance. But what does acceptance mean? That we like what happened? No. That we are going to sit back and do nothing about it, nothing to improve our lives? Definitely not! Being proactive isn't acceptance, and being proactive is important. What acceptance is is this: To tell the truth about what is, that's it. Nothing more, nothing less. If the house is red, say so. Period. You may not like that color, that color might be very wrong, or even incorrect, inappropriate, or whatever judgment you have about it, but again, it's still red. You may even be working to change things, and what you are working to change in this case, is red. Nothing more, nothing less. When you are in the creation mode, versus the judgment mode, you go from looking at red and feeling bad about it, to envisioning blue and feeling good about it, and then to taking the steps to paint the house a different color.

In these steps, we have a wonderfully accurate guidance system that lets us always know two things. One, what doesn't work for us, and two, the direction we have to go in to feel better. If something upsets us, obviously it does not work for us, but we have it backwards. We forget the purpose of upset: It's to inform us of how we feel, of what works for us and what does not. The purpose of upset is not to change things, because it can't. Our actions, our response to upset, and our way of being, are the three things that enact change in our lives. Be, do, and have, then, after you disappear your upset, and then all that you do will become much more accepting, and much more effective in enacting real change. The change that you want, not what your upset wants. Because your upset can't change things, it even appears that it doesn't want change, all the moreso because it insists on continuing on, fully knowing that upset cements things in place through focusing on trying to do the impossible: to change what is, into what is not. Won't work, not ever! After the initial upset does its job of informing you of some way you are feeling, continuing on with you being upset after that fact then becomes its only purpose. By doing so, it guarantees that the status quo will be maintained, as it feeds itself with crumbs of "being right" that life isn't fair. Even when life is actually quite fair, and even when you can affect real change through acceptance. Why do this? Because you can!