Joy's Counterpart

Think Tank #60

Everything in life has its opposite.

Birth ends in death. Relationships—well, they go the same way, if you’re lucky enough for nothing else to terminate them in the meantime.

For every beautiful thing you have in this world, you must also endure the crippling pain of its loss.

Your life. The people you love .Your material possessions—you can’t take those in the end. All of your accomplishments. Your goals, your dreams.

Life sucks, huh?

Well, not really. It just is. That fear of departing with something proves that it’s something worth having. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t care.

That’s the deep, wet, dark, slimy chasm where a lot of people like to live—the one where the fear is gone. Where they don’t have to live in fear every day of several separate tragedies, of the jig finally being up, of their happiness ending.

There is a kind of freedom in having nothing to lose. But it’s empty. Joyless. Having nothing to lose means having nothing at all.

Being okay with impermanence is one of the hardest things ever. It makes us want to detach, whether we realize it or not. Steel ourselves for the end instead of enjoying what we have. It’s tragic, when you think about it. When you’re preparing yourself for some future tragedy, we never get to enjoy or even experience the thing we’re so afraid of losing.

The thing we’re holding onto can be anything. Another person. Success and fulfillment. Just happiness itself.

Uncertainty is everywhere. Fear is the counterpart of joy. Embrace it. And then forget about it. Because you only have two choices—you can lose the thing you’re so afraid of losing later, or you can give it up right now.