"Be Alive While You're Alive"

                It’s very hard not to be self-centered. In fact our automatic response right from birth is to be self- centered.  In a real sense we have to be to learn, to adapt and survive. In fact I would suggest the kids that don’t thrive lack an ability to make themselves the most important thing in the world when they need to. As we get older we often continue to think of ourselves as the center of the universe. Why wouldn't we? When you think about it, everywhere you go, you are in the middle of what is going on. There are things in front and back of you and on either side that are either coming towards you or you are reaching out to, interacting with. But life-long self-centered(ness) is the root cause of much unhappiness.

                My friend Katherine in San Diego said it best recently when she told me she doesn’t believe in happiness. She said it’s a man-made construct that makes it seem that happiness is something you can acquire and having once “got it” you can hang onto it like the fairy tale told us, “happily ever after”. But happiness doesn’t exist as a thing. We can have happy moments but only as part of a larger picture where we can also have unhappy moments and all in the same day. I might have a great time having breakfast with my son, but then later go to teach my class and have an unhappy experience when they are unmotivated and unprepared. Sometimes I think the biggest disappointment of life is constantly striving to be “happy” but finding there is no permanent happy.

                Let’s put the two concepts together. We are naturally self-centered people that also never seem to be as happy as we think we should be. We think others are happier than we are and wonder why not us. But, lets’ accept for a moment, that the way it works is we are capable of being both happy and unhappy all in the same day or moment, just like joy, sad, anger and love, a continually flowing and changing stream. If you accept that then the question "are you happy" is the wrong question. The better question is: are you happy with who you are?

                If you value money most of all you will never be happy because you will never have enough money and you will constantly worry about losing your money. You'll spend inordinate amounts of time and energy securing  money, and be forever guarded.. Remember Charles Dickens character Scrooge was a man that valued money over everything else and was dead inside. He came to life when he changed from valuing money to valuing people and it was when he began to contribute to other people’s happiness that he found his own.

                If what you value most is power, authority, and dominance you will never be truly happy because you will always worry who is plotting to take away your power, and you might harm others to keep your power. Remember Shakespeare's character Macbeth that slipped into paranoid madness trying to hang on to his power. You will try to buy loyalty, and obsess over perceived enemies and treacheries. Other people will cease to be people to you. 

                If what you value most is your looks, being the center of attention you will not be happy either because you’ll always worry that someone else will replace you as the desired object. You’ll fight nature to maintain your looks but ultimately fail as nature eventually claims you as it does everyone else. If your sense of worth is  based on your looks, being the trophy wife or husband then every day must be  a frightening march towards inevitable misery.

If you require friends and fans to adore you and validate you more than anything else you will never be happy with who you are because friends come and go. Fan worship is even more fleeting. Remember Mark David Chapman thought John Lennon was a god, then shot him in the back and killed him. Also, your real friends will demand you not be so self-centered and yet self-centered vanity is mostly all you have to offer. If you live long enough, one friend after another will eventually drop off, one way or another and then what do you have left?

Nothing can be worse than being dead while alive. You see and hear people every day that are dead while alive. The expression, “have a nice day” uttered completely by rote, with no real feeling; the person not even looking at you is the voice of someone that is dead while alive. “See you later” uttered with no interest, belief or care that they will ever see you later is the voice of the living dead. There are more examples but you get my point. I meet people every day that are dead while alive. Why not be alive while we are alive!

               

          We can, first by realizing we aren't and don't have to be the center of the universe.  We need  to try to get outside ourselves; see things from someone else’s perspective. When you are pissed at the old man clogging up the line at the register, instead of saying to yourself, “Perfect, an old fart clogging up the line, I’m tired and I just want to get this done”? Try thinking maybe this guy is trying to get an overcharge corrected because he is on such a limited income that he needs every cent to survive. His life could be far worse than mine. I have to wait a few minutes longer; he might not be eating at the end of this month. The person that cut you off in the car may be a wife hurrying to a hospital because her child took ill at school and is being rushed there. Another thing we can all do is to make other people's lives a bit better each day. Get a smile from the person behind the counter in a “dead end” job. Do something unexpected and nice for someone, even as small as picking up something a person dropped in front of you.

                When we stop being SO self-centered and realize that we have the power to affect other people’s lives in a good way and that when we do; we leave a lasting mark on humanity.  Money, looks, friends, fans and/or power are not worth being remembered for. Our true lasting worth, our real contribution to the world,  begins the day we become more other-centered. That is the same day we begin to like who we are and experience moments of deeply felt happiness.