If you want to be free, stop choosing
Every day we make choices in our life, what to drink what to eat, where to go and what to do. But those are not the choice I want to talk about here. I want to have a closer look at those other choices otherwise known as taste or value.
As soon as we value something there are things that “better” or “worse” than that thing. In short we’re constantly comparing whatever it is that crosses our path and it limits us, it limits us severely.
Picking flowers
If a flower is less beautiful than the one you saw yesterday, is it a lesser flower? How about this blogpost, how does it compare to other blogposts, not only on this blog but compared to all other blogposts out there. Do you see the limitations? We find it harder (or even impossible) to appreciate what’s in front of us because something else has a higher assigned value.
It’s impossible to stop comparing but it’s not impossible to stop choosing the one over the other. Why wait for something better that’s out there when you have something great in hand. To many opportunities go passed this way just because they don’t compare favorably to your golden standard. To much time is wasted in hunting down these golden standards when something lesser (again, an assigned value) is right in front of us.
You loose a lot of opportunities and time this way.
Letting quality slip
Am I advocating no longer chasing quality? Certainly not! Yes that newest model phone is better, even the best out there but isn’t your current model almost as good? After all, you were happy when you first got it right? The quality of what you have hasn’t changed, the assigned value changed, you choose to make something else your golden standard and now are no longer content with what you have.
It’s an ongoing cycle, the search for ever greater things and always looking to the future for opportunities when they are in fact, right under your nose this very instant.
Why hunt for the better *insert something here* when the one you have is just fine as it is.
The freedom bit
The title of this blogpost mentioned being free and so far I didn’t write about it yet. What does freedom have to do with it all. As soon as you no longer waste time you have more time on your hands to do the important stuff, there’s some freedom right there.But there is more.
As soon as we assign values like beautiful, tasty and pleasant we immediately give birth to ugly, disgusting and unpleasant for the one can not be without the other. We chose to call that flower pretty and so other flowers are lesser flowers. As a direct result the other flowers will give us less pleasure. Congratulations to us, we just cheated ourselves out of pleasure. Way to go!
Assigning value leads to a diminished capability of enjoying what’s right here, right now for you can not enjoy fully what is here if you’re thinking of a golden standard elsewhere.
And so, when you stop choosing, you gain freedom to enjoy whatever is right here.
This was exactly what I needed to read this morning. It seems that much of our misery stems from our perception of what is “beter”, which is usually just something different from what we already have. It is the “grass is always greener” phenomenon. Definitely good food for thought. Thanks!