The Illusion of Thinking That It Will Get Easy

I’m sure you know this voice in your mind—the voice of comfort, telling you that you can still do it tomorrow.

Only today.

Just one piece.

One drink.

One sniff.

One moment of distraction.

One moment of mindlessness.

"When conditions get better, we’ll do it. When the market gets calmer, we’ll go for it. When there’s more stability again, we’ll go for it..."

If you’re okay with living a life of consumption and superficial pleasure, you can stop reading here, knowing that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But if you are the type who values Truth over comfort, integrity over looking good, going deep over staying shallow, having an interest in the nature of reality, yourself, wanting to create something bigger than yourself, and genuinely contributing—keep reading.

The voice of comfort is not your friend.

The voice of comfort is fear masquerading as pleasure.

It is the voice of numbness and dumbing yourself down.

A voice that urges us to stay asleep, think the same thoughts, do the same things, meet the same people, have the same conversations, eat the same junk food, and watch the same mindless show—all to get momentary relief from looking at the enormity and truly the insane reality of life.

It is the voice that keeps us safe from facing our own biases, ego trips, and shortcomings and protects us from experiencing the pain of others deeply.

It is what makes us look away when we see a homeless person on the corner of the street. It convinces us to have one more drink and justifies the midnight stop at McDonald's as the only viable option because everything else is closed—denying our responsibility for not preparing something healthy for the trip in advance.

The same voice switches over to excessive judgment and criticism of ourselves when we attempt to change but don’t get it right immediately, don’t manage to hit the goal on the first try or fall back into our habitual ways of being.

You can call it ego, the mind, the lower self—but you could also just call it something to grow out of.

Just as we can’t walk when we’re born, we don’t know how to be with our own minds in the beginning and don’t understand how to relate to them. We think we have to listen to this voice, have to do what it says or respond to our feelings in the way we’ve learned from others who are still asleep.

But this is just not the case.

We can wake up.

We can grow out of this voice and even create a more supportive inner environment.

What it requires is courage, compassion, self-honesty, and a whole lot of willingness to actually do the work to grow.

Not because you are wrong, not because it’s better, but because you say that’s what you want.

It is a path that holds great rewards, but it also kills the illusion of being either the "good person" or "bad person" that you think you are.

It will put you in the driver’s seat of your life, until the point where there is no driver—only life. The narration of it will cease, leaving only the immediacy, the aliveness of each moment, fully, actually, completely being what you are.

And it will take all you have, all of you, to fully go for it. No safety net. No plan B. No parachute.

The reward? Everything.