What if you just make up your own rules?
What if you color your own life, exactly the way you like it right now?
What if you take the last cookie and don’t offer it to somebody else and enjoy that?
What if a life well lived is not a universal but a truly personal thing?
I know most of us, the spiritually inclined people, have all these lofty ideas about compassion and love and care, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we secretly tap ourselves on the back for it and feel good about it (I know I do, for sure).
Which is fine.
Like everything else.
I mean: really.
And I’m not trying to pretend I know more than you, that I know what you should or shouldn’t do, that I’m the Keeper of Truth.
I’m only trying to open up things a little bit.
(And this is probably just me talking to myself.)
For a long, LONG time I couldn’t simply be in life.
I couldn’t relax completely, just float in whatever was there.
I guess it felt like I didn’t deserve that level of simple okayness, and that I needed to entertain at least a fair amount of anxiety and worry to keep disaster at bay.
Like I was constantly training for the Olympic Misery Games, without knowing when they would take place.
One day this just stopped making sense, and I thought:
‘What if you just make up your own rules?’
‘What if you can play this life EXACTLY the way you like it?’
Which was obviously fiercely attacked by all these strong ideas about responsibility, selfishness, laziness, morality, humility and putting other people first.
But what if all of that doesn’t mean anything unless it’s the result, the natural outcome, of living life just for living life itself?
And what if THAT doesn’t even matter?
What if you just want to feel amazing as much as possible?
What would happen if you could let go of the idea that you have to be a good boy or girl and holy and perfect and humble and kind?
What if your own rules, YOURS, turn out to be what makes you shine and dance and appreciate life in a whole new way, a deeper way, a more beautiful and intense way?
What if you stop listening to the judgements from your mind and the minds of other people, and do whatever the hell you want to do?
What if you don’t have to save the other souls?
And what if you decide to stuff suffering from now on?
To me, that feels like freedom.
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(Photo by @jplenio, for Unsplash)