GETTING SATISFACTION IN LIFE; An Experience from Lockdown
During the lockdown period, one of my hobbies was listening to music, But I don’t listen to every genre of music as I have my own favorite genre which makes me happy and I’m very deep in them. This is one thing I’ve been doing for years so I was confident that I know a lot about music. During this time when most of us were stalked at home and couldn’t move around the way we wanted, I was stalked with my brother who also listen to music but different from the kind of genre I listen to. Over time He would be playing them so loud in the house for longer period then slowly I starting feeling like listening to them also. I downloaded some music sang by those artists and started jamming to their songs.
After some time it was boring to me, I couldn’t even catch up with the way they sang and their lyrics. Slowly I started feeling like I don’t know much about music after-all, since I don’t know all the genre of music globally then I shouldn’t be that confidence in me. When I’ve had enough, I decided to delete all the songs I got from him and then continue with my familiar genre.
Using this past experience to paint a bigger picture, this is how some of us are living our lives in general. The world has made us think that the only way to get satisfaction is by getting more; more money, traveling for more vacations, more houses, more cars, getting more promotion at work, more recognition in the society but that’s not all right.
Getting satisfaction in life is something that can make us live a very fulfilled life. There are many ways we can get satisfaction in life but it’s all down to discovering what truly makes us happy.
In the world today, there are so many things we do that doesn’t make any positive impact in our happiness but for one reason or the other we do them without realizing that instead of it to make us happy or more happy, it is gradually making us unsatisfied, and without being satisfied you can never be truly happy.
“Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.” That’s what Alan Watts refers to as the backward law - if you keep keep trying to get satisfaction from something you will never be satisfied.
Looking around us, we do have that one person who is very average and whose interest is going to work, earning just to take care of his family and is very satisfied with life. Then we also have that businessman or woman who is always thinking of meeting the target for the year and then set a new financial target to be met in his or her business world. We can also see the statesman who is thinking of moving higher in his political position in the society. To the outside world, they are a top citizen in the society but when you move closer to those people we would discover that they aren’t satisfied because they want more.
Why do we constantly feel the need to check our bodies in the mirror? Why do we actually need to feel like we aren’t doing good for ourselves based on society standards when it still won’t make us satisfied or happy.
One way to get happiness and satisfaction in life is through focus, paying attention and prioritizing what truly makes us happy. It might be difficult to leave out those extra things we get involve with that doesn’t make us happy. But through and constant practice it is achievable and until then can we say we are living a satisfactory life.
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