What you need is more excitement in your life. That’s what the latest Instagram headlines, media posts and magazine covers are telling me. They assure me that if only I had more pleasure and exhilaration in my life, I would be much happier and fulfilled.
It seems everyone else is having immense fun and experiencing a charmed existence, while you seem to be stuck in the merry go round of the unexceptional. Subsequently when people experience the monotony of everyday life, they become restless and feel that their life is relatively unappealing. Ensuing unhappiness follows and various resentments and depressive states emerge.
Comparative measuring however is flawed with illusionary inaccuracies. Could the veil of façade be removed, we would observe that all is not as it seems. These so-called template lives with seemingly unending fun, are not real, are not possible and only serve to enslave us to envious discontentment.
Instead, Real Life involves responsibilities, commitment and the tedium of necessary but seemingly unpleasant tasks. Real satisfaction and contentment are found in acceptance that life is a mixture of the ordinary and the extraordinary the common and the exceptional.
Solomon, the wisest and wealthiest man that ever lived, had this to say: There is a time for everything; There is a time to be joyous and a time to be serious, a time to work and a time to dance… And there is nothing better than that a man should be satisfied with what he has been given… Ecclesiastes 3:1,4,22
Rui Coelho, © 2024
