We are born good. Smiley. Happy.
With an inner, unconscious-yet-certainty, that we were given the gift of Life.
We are curious, dazzled by what we discover every day.
And we keep laughing. Unnecessarily. We are thrilled with each new discovery! What a perfect life!
And then, little by little, we start to “grow up”. To “mature”.
We learn the “musts” and the “don’ts”. Right and wrong. The “proper” behavior. Good manners.
The shame. The guilt.
And we’re starting to adapt.
We become hesitant. Suspicious. Distrustful.
We try not to express too much, in order not to get hurt. We don’t want anyone to take advantage of us. We don’t want to be sad…
And we start to close up. We don’t express our joy.
While continuing to “mature” we begin to feed something called EGO. We have to stand out. To gain strength, wealth, power. And to do that, we see the others as opponents. Enemies. Obstacles to our pursuits.
We create a “war” landscape, which we take care to overlap with the hue of “kindness”, of good manners, of decency.
We are CIVILIZED…
And so, slowly but surely, we are moving further and further away from our true nature.
From the self that we were born with. The one that included the joy of life. The wisdom.
We shroud it, place it under layers.
We forget it.
At some point, however, Life starts to send us messages. A loss, an illness, a great misfortune, a dissolution, something for which we were not prepared, resting in our vast Ego, which we nourished so well for so many years.
We did something wrong. Some mistake was made…
And the countdown begins.
We are searching to “find” our lost self…
We travel, we change professions, we divorce, we reflect on our ideas and perceptions, trying to understand the mistake.
The most persistent of us, as we search, we discover that the self we were so persistently looking for all this time, was here. Next to us. Inside us. And we start to take out one by one the veils, the layers under which we had hidden it with our own hands.
It was always here.
We begin to remove the unnecessary.
The pursuit of wealth, power, competition, intolerance.
We discover the value of humanity. Of friendship. Of love. Of goodness. Of laughter. Of joy. Of childhood.
We become – we all that persistently search – more modest. More humble. Happier. Wiser. Freer.
We realize that we are not the center of the world. That we are ONE with our fellow human being. With the one on the other side of the earth. Because they have the same quests. The same problems. The same anxieties.
They also, at some point, were a happy, wise child who was born and developed into a frightened, seared adult.
And they, like us, are looking for the coveted happiness.
And we calm down.
I wish everyone a nice, beautiful, wonderful journey to this new destination.
In a destination that has always been here. Inside us.
Our childlike, smiling, free Self.
Be well.
