lose your expectations
“We all love to win, but who loves to train” -Mark Spitz, 1972; If you want to live a real life, lose your irrational expectations of what is and just live the best life you can live. Sure, that sounds like advice, but it’s actually an “empty” warning to everyone who wants reality over fantasy, rationality over irrationality, or having a type B personality instead of a type A personality.
The training that comes with a real life is nothing less than a kind of harsh punishment, but you get the satisfaction of living the real thing, like eating the “bad tasting” but good for you Post Shredded Wheat cereal versus the ” good taste”, but bad. for you Post Fruity Flinstones Pebbles cereal full of sugar and preservatives that are really bad. (I know, in my last two articles, I’m using a sort of metaphor of good and bad breakfast cereals, but stick with me if you want a real, rational life that works, you’ll get it.)
I think of the title of author George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff’s final work “Life is real only then, when ‘I am'”, when I think that the only way to really be is healthy and honest and that is difficult in this world full of of irrational. “easy roads” and false pleasures that really lead to nothing but the grave, even cocaine and smoking. Genuine pleasures in life take hard work and are like the “eye of the needle to achieve” really, but when you do they are even more satisfying in a sense because they are earned and I can honestly say that a rational immortality is even more hard. because most people’s attitude is “If we can’t have our irrational fun, what are we going to do forever?” Thus, cycles of irrationality and death happen in this world in the name of “fun”. Destructive wars are fun for generals and leaders, sure, but what about all those who die and pay for everything as “foot soldiers” and the truly miserable people who do all the dirty and messy work for all those who “get the glory”?
Like I said, genuine rationality is mostly hard work and honesty with yourself, the pleasure comes after you do well and earn it all rather than “cutting corners” that are irrational, but immediately “fun” until you really like it. destroy. somehow. A good reality is earned, not given, that’s my final point in this article, and you need to “get down” and do the work to get it. Thanks.
