Eric’s Blog

The last few days have been challenging for me to say the very least. But, the good news is…I’ve learned something about myself that I didn’t know before today. I could complain about the horrible, negative things in my life every time something comes up, but I want this blog to be about the positive things in my life.

This is going to sound a bit backward at first, but I’ll give you time to wrap your mind around it.

Chasing after positive things in life is a generally negative experience. Accepting the negative things in life is a generally positive experience.

Think about it this way…life is suffering. I wrote about that in a previous post, A Path To The Dark Side. When we learn to accept that life is full of suffering, we move on with our lives and things are generally positive for us. If we’re constantly worrying about all the positive things that we don’t have, then we’re having a negative experience. Keeping up with the Benjamins is an impossible task.

Even though we are living in the best time ever, we are inundated with someone else’s ideal of what life should be about. Every image, every video, every screen you see, every sound byte you listen to refers to what you don’t have and how you have to chase after it to be happy. Doing so generally leaves us feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. There is no such thing as a perfect life. You can have all the money in the world, but you’re still going to have problems. The only difference between Elon Musk and the drunk down on the corner is that Elon Musk’s money problems are better than the drunk’s. Someone once told me that everything in this life is designed to separate you from your money. That person was not wrong.

“Everything in life is designed to separate you from your money.”

So why worry? Why stress out over all the things that we cannot control in our lives? Anxiety comes from two places, yesterday, and tomorrow. The only thing that we can control is the moment that we’re in. That one, right there. Nope, just missed it. Here’s a new moment that you can control; don’t blink or it will be gone before you know it. Why do we get so worked up over things that we know we have zero control over? Is it because we lose sight of what is important? No. It’s because life is full of suffering. Human beings need the bad with the good to make the good so sweet. If things were sweet all the time, then we’d just live in a saccharin world with little or no meaning in it at all.

This weekend, every little thing was setting me off and I was upsetting the people around me.

Eventually, I realized that I was being angry, negative, and selfish all weekend long. Then I started to get upset about being upset all weekend. It was like a self-eating snake, I was just going around and around in a death spiral of self-loathing. My friend called me out on my behavior and that’s what pulled me out of my death roll.

I realized I was being upset about being upset and when my buddy called me on my negative behavior, I realized that every little thing was setting me off. The way people were driving, the way they were treating one another, people on the road instead of the sidewalk, the service at a bar we went to, the fact that the conversation wasn’t revolving around me and only me. That’s what I figured it out. My life has been pretty good; I didn’t have any problems to deal with, so I was creating my own.

Solving problems is fun!

I started making a list of things that made me happy and one of the main things on my list was understanding why things work, how things work, and solving problems. That’s when I put my realization that my life was pretty good and had very little problems in it together with the fact that life is all about solving problems. That, plus the fact that life is all about suffering made me realize that I was creating my problems instead of enjoying the moment.

I didn’t have any suffering going on at the moment, so I was creating my own. It’s incredibly difficult for me to be content. I’m great when it comes to crises; I’m absolute shit when it comes to a moment of calm. Because of all the calm that was happening, I was having anxiety and creating conflict to have something to deal with. It’s all very narcissistic when you get right down to it.

I was creating my conflict to make the situation all about me.

Once I realized what was going on, I just made a decision. I decided to stop being a jerk, let go of my self-inflicted suffering, and accept the fact that I needed to relax and be in the moment. Granted, this sounds waay easier than done, but after a bit of self-reflection, meditation, and a gut check from a good friend, I pulled my head out of my butt and everyone was able to enjoy their weekends a little bit more; including me.