When does the search for the ‘next thing’ stop, I wonder?: the next note in that already sublime melody, the next salt shaker with a newly discovered healthy sea salt, the therapist who understands us better, this new yoga studio in the corner that has a better ambiance, the new open-minded politician promising to solve the problem with the country and its economical system, the self-help book that is newly published promising awakening, the new wise saying on instagram, this new restaurant in the corner and the next boyfriend who’s much kinder, much nicer and treats us well and showers us with endless compliments and promises of a dreamy future; all these yummy and comforting things at our disposal, and this and that... to help us live a happy and more fulfilled life?
What happens when things get out of control in lives and there is none of these available for us to hold on to? What happens when we feel stuck in an emotional swamp and there is no therapist a phone call away? What happens when we are hungry and there is no Chinese fast food restaurant around the corner for our convenience. What happens when there are no more stray cats or dogs to save or no more shiny cars to drive, no more boats to row when there is a storm. What then? Will those last remaining seconds of life make us wish we had gone with that other business deal, with the other life coach a friend had recommended or will that moment make us wish we had put the time to figure things out on our own.?
We are all already swimming in deep and vast waters of "things", in the world of the “next thing” things. There is already too much out there. We have already done plenty, learnt plenty, practiced plenty, made love plenty, drunk plenty, earned plenty, eaten plenty, seen plenty, demanded plenty, prayed plenty, complained plenty, were given plenty, on and on and if that hasn’t done it for us then what will?
We keep broadening the ocean around us that already is vast. We keep filling up an ocean with more water not knowing that it’s all water already and when we keep grabbing onto water we inevitably sink. How much longer can we hold on to froth? We can’t. We’ll drown and we are drowning as we speak.
The big appetite for the next thing is as enticing and flimsy as a beautiful body of the next younger woman that will inevitably get old and sink us in the process of searching for the next younger, better looking one - one that 'understands us better than anyone else in this world.'
We must dig deeper into ourselves beyond this short-term mental happiness and figure things out on our own, otherwise when we let others dig for us they’ll happily do it but they’ll only dig 6 feet and it will already have been too late.
Beethoven once said, “Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.” It may seem like a random quote and it may very well be but I take that as a metaphor for becoming pure in this life with the process of ridding ourselves of ignorance. Only then life will be good and delicious with many ingredients like a good soup and we will have fun living it.
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