lose your expectations

“We all love to win, but who loves to train” -Mark Spitz, 1972; If you want to live a real life, drop your irrational expectations of what it is and just live the best life you can possibly live. Sure, that sounds like advice, but it’s really an “empty” warning to everyone who wants reality over fantasy, rationality over irrationality, or having a type B personality instead of a type A personality.

The training that comes with real life is nothing short of harsh punishment of sorts, but you get the satisfaction of living what’s real, like eating the “bad-tasting” but good-for-you Post Shredded Wheat cereal versus ” good taste”, but bad. to you Post Fruity Flinstones Pebbles cereal full of sugar and preservatives that are really bad. (I know, in my last two articles, I’m using a kind of good and bad breakfast cereal metaphor, but stick with me if you want a real, rational life that works, you’ll get it.)

I think of the title of author George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff’s final work “Life is real only then, when “I am””, when I think that the only way to really be is healthy and honest and that is difficult in this crowded world. of irrational. “easy roads” and false pleasures that really lead to nothing but the grave, right down to cocaine and smoking. Genuine pleasures in life require hard work and are like the “eye of the needle to achieve” really, but when you do, they are even more satisfying in a sense because they are earned and I can honestly say that a rational immortality is even more hard. because most people’s attitude is “If we can’t have our irrational fun, what would we do forever?” Thus, cycles of irrationality and death happen in this world in the name of “fun”. Destructive wars are fun for generals and leaders, sure, but what about all those who get killed and pay for everything as “foot soldiers” and the truly miserable people who do all the dirty, messy work for everyone? those who “get the glory”?

Like I said, genuine rationality is mostly hard work and honesty with yourself, the pleasure comes after you do well and earn it well instead of “taking shortcuts” that are irrational, but immediately “fun” until they actually destroy you. . somehow. Good reality is earned, not given, that’s my final point in this article, and you need to hunker down and do the work to get it. Thanks.