All of Life is a Preparation for Whatever Happens

Everything in life doesn't happen by accident.  They happen because we prepare for them to happen.  In that way, the life we prepare for, is invariably the life we live.  That is the meaning behind education, diet, exercise, and caring -- both for ourselves, as well as for others, which is the world we live in.  That is why we must care for the world as much as we do ourselves -- because it is ourselves.

That is a fundamental understanding many people miss -- thinking what they do with and in their own lives, has nothing to do with anybody else's.  They may even think that they are against everybody else -- and are always prepared to be so, as the whole object of their lives, which of course, makes it hard and difficult for themselves -- and everybody else.

That is how they see life and all that is happening in it -- as a struggle against everything and everybody else -- rather than the cooperative effort to make life the best for anyone, which is themselves and the world they live in.  This way of thinking, is often regarded as the highest form of understanding achieved by only a few, after a lifetime of arduous study -- often in separation and seclusion from the world "outside," in a worldview that seeks to separate one thing from every other.

For such persons, life is predictably hard and difficult, full of self-denial as well as the denial of things as they are -- preferring their self-indulgence as how things ought to be.  But no matter how grand their schemes for self-aggrandisement, it is only about themselves -- and not the world they share with anybody else.  That is the anti-social and criminal mind, and to a lesser extent, the dysfunctional personalities we all hope not to become -- who invariably perish prematurely through some misunderstanding of how life could be otherwise -- with or without them.

Assuredly, life will go on -- whether one makes the best of it, or the worst of it.  The wise choice is obvious and preferable -- but an aberrant few, will never figure that out until their dying day -- and all the days before then.  Those are the few who disproportionately "make the news" -- because they are so spectacularly wrong.

There is that tendency in each one of us -- and not that there are the self-righteous "intelligent," and the rest deserving to be manipulated and exploited for their own self-interests.  The problem is in this cultivation of this self -- in opposition to all others apart from the living without the cultivation of the self.  That's where all their energy and thoughts are going -- and so there is none left for the being and doing that actually matters and makes a difference.

That is to be in the reality that matters -- where all things are possible and is constantly evolving towards the greater.  That is the meaning of a better life -- that one becomes increasingly aware of -- and not that it doesn't exist, until one personally discovers it.  It is out there already -- just for the taking.  That is the world we live in.  It already has been created -- it is just what we haven't discovered for ourselves yet -- in the great collective intelligence.  Knowing and learning that -- is what real intelligence is -- and not what one thinks they alone possess, that all the others don't.

That is the flawed understanding of every person living below their potential and actualization -- finding out and knowing the way that works, usually while stubbornly clinging to the way that doesn't for them -- which is their reality -- but not necessarily the greater, and desired one.  That is the conclusion they have to come to -- that it is not working, and not that that is the best that anyone can hope for.

Such a better life, requires decisions that result in different outcomes -- and not merely continuing to do the same things, even while calling it different names.  That is not progress -- or can make a difference.  The word is not the thing itself.  One has to see that distinction.  Wrong effort, is not the same as right effort -- and calling them the same, will not produce the desired outcome.  In this case, it is that any effort is preferable to none -- when all one's efforts are creating and perpetuating the problem -- and are not the solution that one is "too busy" to discover -- first.

And not only is their solution not working for them, but they also feel greatly compelled to see it not work for many others as well -- as their great mission in life, because they just don't know any better, and refuse to learn anything different -- until eventually, they couldn't if they wanted to. But by then, it is usually too late to make a difference, and too late to care.

So while one can, the truly inquiring mind is interested in not what merely confirms their present understanding and limitations as all that can be known, but of determining what they don't know that they think they do.  Therein lies the solution -- and the greater (better) life beyond.