By

Bill Cottringer 

“Sometimes, we miss the truth when it's right in front of us, she thought. Sometimes the closer we are, the harder it is to see.” ~Jacqueline Simon Gunn, Circle of Trust.

The Whack-a Mole Game of Life

You bop one down,

Another pops up;

Such is life—

Being one perpetual conflict,

First between us vs. life,

Then expanded,

Us vs. them,

Us vs. ourselves.

The problem is clear,

One conflict solved,

Creates a bigger one,

To solve, endlessly.

So, we invent hope—

If we believe and work hard,

That tomorrow will be better,

But the better never comes,

At least enough of it,

Or until we learn to accept,

The unacceptable—

Who we are here and now,

And not who we pretend to be,

Or want to become.

     What I am about to say may be both presumptuous and provocative. But this epiphany was largely prompted by three other writers much smarter than I am—Frederick Nietzsche , Alan Watts and the new pop philosopher on the block, Mark Manson. My unveiling of the mystery of life piggy-backs off Manson’s “uncomfortable truth” in “Everything is F*cked.” about the “Whack-a-Mole game, or love-hate relationship between hope and fuckedness.  

     I tend to think Manson enhanced his fundamental premise from Nietzsche’s greatly misunderstood  books, “God is Dead,” and “Beyond Good and Evil,” where the earlier philosopher exposed the counterfeit conflict between perpetual yin-yang conflict and nihilism, and also  from Watts’ “The Wisdom of Insecurity” where all institutionalized vales from politics to  religion to science , were just false security blankets until they were seen for what they really were—temporary security blankets until we could accept the wisdom of insecurity.

     We invented these things rather than them being out there in reality for us to find. Accepting this statement as true r than false, may be the first step in shedding our temporary adult security blankets. Of course, the natural fear of what will we do without them, comes into play to stop us in our tracks and reinforce the belief that there really is hope for a better tomorrow when today isn’t so good, as long as we have faith in the truth of our chosen values and work smart to act on them.

     So, what the hack, I might as well go for the jugular and unveil the great mystery of life. But guess what? It is hidden so well that none of us can find it even with the best of instruction. The mystery of life’s hiding spot is very clever—it only exists in our imagination and not in reality. The ironic part about it is that the mystery is thought to be the solution to life’s ultimate conflict—us vs. life, or more locally, us vs. them or us vs. ourselves. The mystery of life is that there is none. Others have termed this reality as the great cosmic joke on us. I think this is the meaning of the trite aphorism that life is a journey (to be experienced without judgment) and not a destination (to arrive at by conquering it).

    The psychological make-up of human beings is centered round this perpetual conflict caused by our separation from everything with our dualistic minds. This separation was driven by our insatiable need to: (a) understand life (b) find meaning and purpose in it, and (c) be able to control the things that happen more to our pleasurable liking than to our painful suffering, that collectively make living seem worthwhile. The trouble is, we can only capture moments of this resulting state of mind called happiness, by successfully solving problems and conflicts that continually challenge us. One uncomfortable truth is that solving one problem often creates a bigger problem, more difficult to resolve.

    Part of the camouflage that hides this imagined mystery of life, is the tempting illusion of the whole self-development/improvement mega billion-dollar industry which force shifts our focus from who we are here and now today, to who we can be tomorrow.  We have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into getting more sooner than now—more schooling, more money, more health, more beauty, more property, more wisdom, more religion, more friends on Facebook, more fun things to do, more of everything, because we just don’t have enough of it now to be satisfied. We don’t really need more, but we must maintain our hope that we can.

     Now I need to t least try get to the root of the problem—Does reality really need changing or just our faulty and incomplete perceptions of it, including the belief we can and should improve things, especially when they are not to our liking? Isn’t the current political divide in our country a loud wake-up call, exposing another uncomfortable truth that all types of governments are doomed to failure when one particular side’s agenda is taken to the extreme? Or that there are some unsolvable conflicts?

    Sometime during our mental evolution, we decided that the competitive, win-lose, either or mentality was the best to have. This was a sure way to be more successful in solving conflicts and changing reality to our liking. Now, some have been thinking for a while that it may be time for a shift to a cooperative mentality with win-win outcomes, by and-and options. But there are obstacles to this needed transition. The obstacle is our dualistic minds which: (a) judge things as having opposite qualities like good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, true vs. false, and (b) separate thoughts and feelings with different powers that influence our behavior one way or the other.

     If there is any hope in finding a tentative solution to this divisional mess, it likely can come from the power of acceptance. And what we may very well have to accept is that life is a series of perpetual conflicts in which there is no way to prove one side of the divide has a better solution than the other. This is virtually unacceptable news, so acceptance must start with accepting that acceptance limitation and then see what happens after that.

“Don’t take yourself or life too seriously because after all, you aren’t going to get out of it alive.”

~ The Author.