Be True To Yourself Part II

The post before this one explains about a book I am reading on what you need to know to be wise, happy and fulfilled before you die. It has five secrets, the first being Be True To Yourself. I discussed what this might actually mean in the previous post, and most interestingly received an excellent comment.

I know have listened through the section on being true to yourself, and essentially the idea is that everyone has something that they are meant to do, and if you do that you will be happy and fulfilled. In practical terms the advice is to take time on a regular basis to evaluate how your life is going, what you are doing, and then to see if your life consists of you doing the thing that you are supposed to be doing. A number of real life examples are given of people who realized what they should be doing, did it, and then were happy. There are examples of people who always knew what they should be doing, and other examples of sudden changes in understanding, and then examples of people who did not follow their True Self and were unhappy. So, the advice is to think about what feels right for you to do on a regular basis and then try to do that.

There is no mention of people who simply don't know what they should be doing, who have no calling, who don't have anything that consistently is rewarding as a primary thing in their life. I have always enjoyed reading science fiction books, I like walking in pretty places, listening to music, drinking beer with friends, and seeing new places. Essentially my calling, for me to be true to myself, I need to have as many vacations as possible. This hardly seems to be news, or insight, or great wisdom, or perhaps it is?

My friend Dade in his response to the last post wrote, "The danger in pursuing happiness, it seems to me, is that, if you pursue it, you are by definition, unhappy." Now, I have deliberately pursued happiness to great effect when faced with possible misery, I would say there's a good chance that the pursuit of happiness has saved my life. I also have actually really enjoyed the pursuit at times, the exploration of eastern philosophies was enormously rewarding. I don't think searching for happiness means you are automatically unhappy, you might be (as I am) trying to get happier from a position of general contentment. I am interested in moving from saisfaction towards bliss. But perhaps this pursuit can also be counter-productive, that there is a law of diminishing returns in the search, that after a while good enough becomes more and more comfortable, more contented, more happy. Perhaps what I will learn from this book is that I am already doing the things that are wise, and what I should be doing is being relaxed and comfortable with where I am, and reaping the rewards.

When I picture what would be a great life for myself, it looks a lot like the life I am living, but simply with more end results. That is that the things I am doing, if continued will eventually produce what I am after. The only problem is the pressure I feel to do them faster and better, but that just isn't really me. A great example is music. I love to perform music for people, if they are willing. One of my dreams is to be a good enough musician that this can happen casually, easily, and often. I would love to be able to choose to play in public as much as I would like, to be able to play with good musicians without embarrassment. This requires another 2000 hours of solid practice, probably more. But I am not driven to practice for several hours a day, sometimes I don't want to play at all. So I feel guilt, or pressure to practice to get where I want with music. But devoting myself to a single task has never been me. I putter, and switch between things. But that's OK, maybe I'll be where I want in music in five years instead of one or two, and the journey will be more pleasant.

So the lesson that I have gotten from the book so far is that I'm doing all right, I should just relax and smell the roses a little more, if I feel so inclined.