Life is easy, humans complicate it
It isn’t true? You sleep, you wake up, you eat, and at some point, you go back to bed. The sun rises and the sun sets without your contributing to it.
“Life is easy. Humans make it complicated.” I first heard this from Dr. Glenn Matthews, a great American psychologist who retired in Bangkok, Thailand.
It took me a while to fully understand the depth of this statement.
I grew up in Germany. In a culture that seems to advocate retirement as the ultimate goal of life. We Germans go through a thorough education to get a good job, and then we work as hard as possible until we reach retirement at the age of sixty-something. Then real life begins, and only then. Before that it is a struggle, and there is little time to enjoy life.
The problem is that once people reach retirement age, they are often no longer able to physically enjoy life as much as they would like. And of course many do not even reach this age. Like one of my classmates who died at the age of 29 in a bus accident in Turkey.
My last seven years in Thailand turned out to be a great learning experience. Thais live in the moment. It’s like the other end of my German roots. Often when a Thai person encounters a problem at work, he will leave the job overnight. They don’t worry much about the future, and their amazing networking abilities ensure that someone is always looking out for them, in some way.
Buddhist monks teach us how little we need to live. And indeed, it is no different in Christian belief: “Look at the birds of the sky, which do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” -Matthew 6:26
If life is really so easy, why do we humans make it so complicated?
I once knew a lady from Bhutan. I don’t know much about Bhutan, but I remembered that this country ranks first in the world happiness index. I asked that lady why she thinks this is the case. Her response was as simple as it was shocking: “I think we wish for less.”
And that is probably true. Are not unfulfilled desires the key to all suffering?
“Those who seek security pursue it all their lives without ever finding it (…) The attachment to money and security only creates insecurity, no matter how much money we have in the bank,” writes Deepak Chopra in “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.”
I admitted that I am not a very spiritual person; Years of education in the natural sciences may have contributed to this. However, the moment I understood Deepak Chopra’s concept of “detached participation”, I fell in love with it and it broadened my mind. Today I successfully apply it in my life in the following way:
I am an ambitious person. I enjoy pursuing goals (for example, becoming the best trainer I can be and adding great value to my clients’ lives). But I’ve learned that happiness does not depend on achieving a specific result. Happiness comes from what you are doing while you are doing it.
If, for example, your objective is to achieve a certain goal within five years and you allow only to be happy once this specific result is achieved in all its details, then you are practicing clinging. You are setting yourself up for trouble. Perhaps throughout the next five years you will not be happy because your happiness depends on that goal that you have not yet achieved. Worse than that, no matter how hard you work, you probably won’t achieve your goal. Or you succeed and realize that it is not, in fact, the source of happiness. Wouldn’t that be sad and a terrible waste of time? This is how you make your life really easy, very complicated.
Find the source of your happiness and do what you have to do to be happy. now. Find the middle path of the Buddha, engage (act and do your best) while practicing detachment (be independent of a specific outcome).
Enjoy the journey and achieve happily.