We are driven by two great forces, pain and pleasure.
As human beings, we will do anything to experience the feeling of pleasure. And by pleasure, I mean receiving or doing things that you love or like, things that give you temporary happiness, long-term fulfilment or anything that fills up your cup of love. We are not wrong to do something that we love, but we tend to forget or not know why we do these things. I’ll try to explain myself.
As I was sitting in the park once again, pondering and just questioning life (as we all do), I realized that we do things out of fear of not feeling the pain we have experienced in the past or that we have seen others go through. Some of those types of pain may be heartbreak, loneliness, failure, and the list can go on, but I hope you get what I mean. The thing is, we also have this tendency to go to extremes to do anything to avoid that feeling of pain that we so fear fumbling upon again. Now, when it comes to questioning what it is that we fear, think about personal things, not superficial things like spiders or snakes, but real fears that make you want to do something to avoid feeling otherwise.
For example, when I moved, I felt lonely and would go to the extreme of becoming someone else (not entirely, but doing things that I wouldn’t normally do) and wanting to meet people. There is nothing wrong with that, but something I realized is that I did want to have these friends in this new city and have someone just to call and hang out with; it made me think about what it was about loneliness that was so painful to me. I questioned if it was not having someone to turn to when I was sad or maybe having a great day and wanting someone to share it with. But now that I am surrounded by great people and truly thankful for it, I also enjoy spending my time alone. I think the more we avoid that feeling of pain, the less we realize what it is that we are genuinely seeking when it comes to pleasure because we may believe that by simply avoiding that hurting feeling, we may also just consider everything to be pleasurable and not even something we love. And that is what got me thinking of when I moved a few months ago.
I know this is a mouthful, and I hope you understood what I was getting to with what I just wrote. However, I do want to invite you to just think about what you love to do and think if it is because you are avoiding feeling pain or if you are doing it because you truly love it. Because remember, love is unconditional, even if it is just a simple thing. When I say that it is unconditional, I mean that we don’t always have to justify our actions so that we can do it.
Z.
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