Merciless

Your life has been tough, hasn’t it.

Things haven’t turned out the way you had hoped they might.

Disappointment has been a close companion.

The more firmly you have established your hopes, the more you have felt the pain of seeing them disappear.

Life is struggle. It has been for thousands of years.

Positive thinking is a weak bandaid. It tears when the stress becomes too great.

All that you have accomplished has failed to move you in the end.

The feelings of tremendous excitement eventually gave way to despair.

The hunger always returned.

Somewhere, deep down, you know all this.

You know that you are spinning your wheels.

You know that you don’t really know what you are looking for.

You also know that you haven’t found it.

Perhaps you never will.

When you look back on your life, you see happy moments. But you see far more sad moments than you do happy ones.

You have struggled for years to become happy.

You’ve done everything under the Sun.

You’ve followed all the advice.

Sometimes it helped a little.

But the happiness always faded.

And now you are here.

What are you hoping to find?

Some secret that perhaps you have overlooked?

There is indeed a secret to lasting satisfaction.

There is indeed a secret to shielding yourself from the merciless nature of life.

The sort of secret that everyone would share if they knew it.

The sort of secret that has, in fact, been shared in the past.

Time and time again.

Only, few in history have truly been willing to listen.

For it goes against everything we have been taught.

So I will share this secret with you.

You will likely reject it.

But some part of you will wonder if I am telling the truth.

Some part of you will wonder if this is the secret you have spent all those years searching for.

The more tightly you cling to your hopes and dreams, the more difficult your life will become.

Every drop of rain will feel like a flood.

Every disagreement will feel like a war.

Life will let you down, because it does not adhere to your wishes.

The events of your life will never bring you lasting peace.

A sense of happiness, perhaps. But this will be fleeting, as you have already come to see.

The more firmly you hold on, the more life will try and shake you free.

The more you try and control life, the more it will fight back.

Please understand, I am not telling you to relinquish control.

Nor am I telling you to surrender.

These would be another step in your quest to gain the upper hand.

As such, they would fail you.

All I will say, and I will say it quietly, is that holding on is the road to pain.

It is the road to sadness.

It is the road to disappointment.

A life of peace can be had.

A life of contentment can be had.

But they cannot be forced.

They must come of their own accord.

Peace arises when the conditions are ripe.

It cannot be captured or caught.

It is a fearful thing to let go of hope.

It is a fearful thing to let go of dreams.

So I will not tell you that you should.

I will leave you only with the knowledge that the possibility exists,

And that peace is waiting for you on the other side.