Have you heard the song Beautiful Things by Benson Boone? If not, take a listen: https://youtu.be/HU08BcK5SUY?si=nYA59_twOTkETASt
Other than the impressive vocal gymnastics, I was struck by the very relatable humanness of the lyrics. Boone opens with a story of finally feeling better after a rough patch and acknowledging his great fortune of now having a fulfilling romantic relationship. He is experiencing happiness, and he is grateful!
BUT (and there’s always a but, isn’t there?)...
Then the mind comes in and does what it does best: presents an imagined future where all of that is lost. And even if that is recognized as not actually happening now, the possibility of loss is still felt in the moment.
"…If everything’s good and it’s great
Why do I sit and wait ‘til it’s gone?
Oh, I’ll tell ya, I know I’ve got enough,
I’ve got peace, and I’ve got love
But I’m up at night thinkin’
I might just lose it all…"
We do this, don’t we? Especially those of us that are prone to experiencing the Alarm/Anxiety Cycle. I used to believe that this type of worry was important, functional, and protective. If I worry about a worst case scenario in advance, then I’ll be prepared when the worst happens, right? I’m being proactive! The blow won’t be as bad when things inevitably fall apart, because that was my expectation all along. That belief structure was bought into for most of my life. And, unsurprisingly, I worried. A LOT.
But if you look at that (highly distorted) logic from the lens of present-moment conscious awareness, it’s completely nonsensical. From the Here and Now, it seems to me that the only “purpose” the experience of worry serves is a distraction from feeling the physical sensations of discomfort arising in the body. The mind would always rather keep your attention in a familiar, efficient thought-cycle than to even entertain the possibility of uncertainty of any kind. Even if worry is uncomfortable, at least it’s a form of suffering that is well worn and known. Uncertainty is unacceptable to an anxious mind.
So, in our attempts to resist and avoid uncertainty, we not only worry, we grasp and cling to the positive feelings and experiences in a desperate attempt to park ourselves in some kind of steady state of happiness:
"Please stay!
I want you, I need you, Oh God,
Don’t take,
These beautiful things that I’ve got."
Please, please, please, freeze me in this state, so I can be happy like this all the time! Bottle this experience up so I can pull it out at any time.
I need to hold on to this in order to be OK!
But, when we look at the nature of Life, this simply cannot be.
Thoughts, feelings, and experiences are transient by nature. They cannot stay. Life is energy in constant motion. Each moment being birthed into existence only to die. Humans are not exempt from the laws of nature. We ARE nature.
Beneath the desperate worry and grasping of the ego, deep down in the marrow of our bones, before and beyond the body-mind, we know this to be a fundamental truth. And in my experience, the more we can pull this primordial fact into conscious awareness and feel into the resonance of it, the less we suffer.
Enjoy the beautiful things that you’ve got right now. They will go. And they will be replaced by some other beautiful things. And so on and so on.
To me, the most beautiful thing of all is the continuous, fresh unfolding of life in every moment. Of that, I am certain.