Hey, I get the sentiment here. And it’s a nice thought. And I’m all for people leading ‘good’ lives. But the best life is a life that we love, and those kinds of lives include joy, laughter, sharing, compassion—all the makings of the easiest type of life. But don’t have that to impress others. Have a great life selfishly, because it feels good for you to live.
Only you experience your thoughts about your life, so what other people think is entirely irrelevant. Everyone lives in their own separate bubble of judgmental thoughts. That’s what the world is to all of us: our ideas about the world. And the people in it. So no matter how we lived, there would still be people who would have hateful thoughts about us. If we were perfect, people would hate us for being perfect.
Remember, Nelson Mandela was in jail for a third of his life, and Martin Luther King and Gandhi were both shot. So no matter how ‘good’ we think we can be, there’s no way to please billions of people. With that fact accepted (which is the opposite of what this meme suggests is possible), we can just relax and selfishly do what feels right to us as a happy and connected person.
Our best life is found in the search for our truest self, and that will include many experiences in which we will disappoint others. But we can’t seek perfection as an ego. We must simply realize ourselves authentically, in as many moments as we’re able to stay conscious for. And if we demanded a definition for ‘goodness,’ that’s what we should use.
That flowing, accepting response is the purest form of ‘us’ in the spiritual sense. We are then capital-T ‘Truth in motion.’ We are the universe being. And there is nothing ‘wrong’ in that, including you. Do not waste your life trying to win over the opinions of others. Trust yourself and live your life without a fear of judgment. That’s your most direct route to your most rewarding self.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.
