The simple art of not being miserable

The simple art of not being miserableThe simple art of not being miserableInHerman HessesnovelSiddhartha,the title character and his friend leave home,disowningall possessions, to binnenseek spiritualenlightenment.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreThey decide to live on the road, homeless,jurneyingawayfromthe known towards theunknown.Its not a life of ease, but it is one they embrace.Whentheyarehungry, they fast.When they are unoccupied, they meditate.When they are looking for answers, they wait.And as they move from place to place, they get more and morefixated on their goal.Eventually, however, they separate - it occurs due to their meeting with the Buddha himself.After hearing the legends about theEnlightenedOne and then seeking him out, they are both impressed with his calmpoiseand the simple profundity of his teachings.The friend, Govinda, stays behind to become his student, whileSiddhartha - although appreciating what he has learned - decides to continue on a more individualistic pursuit.This pursuit takes him through both space and time He settles down in a city, saches for a woman, and over theyears, becomes a successful businessman. This, of course, doesnt fulfill him either, so he leaves. His next stop, his final stop, is a small home by a river where he lives with a ferryman.The ferryman is a simple, quiet man, but hepossesses anunspokenwisdom thatentrancesanyone who meets him.Living in his presence, aftermany more years of unrest and suffering from all the seeking, Siddhartha eventually, in a sudden moment, finds himself at peace.At the end of his life, Govinda, who is still searching for enlightenment, hears about an older ferryman who people whisper has the answer.This ferryman is Siddhartha,who has now taken over fromhis oldmentorat the river.When Govinda tells him that he is still a seeker, his oldfriend - right before the book ends - sh ares what it is that he has learned after all these yearsWhensomeone seeks, said Siddhartha,then it easily happens thathis eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing becausehe always thinks only about the thingheis seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed withhisgoal.Seekingmeans having a goal.Butfinding means being free, being open, having no goal.The Problematic Zone ofFixationThe story ofSiddharthaand his friend is set in a world far different from the one we occupy.Its asimplerworld, one with fewer forces swaying minds.Their quest, too, is not theunhealthiestone you can pursue.Aspiring towardsfulfillmentis, generally speaking, far better than many of the things that occupy our desires in modernity - think money, status, and pleasure.The core problem, though, is the same.Its the root of allself-inflicted misery.Happiness - or more accurately,a lack of unhappiness - isa product of the relationship that exists betwee n oursubjectiveexpectationsand the objective reality.Overthe long-term,a feeling of peaceful contentmentcomes down to the objective reality giving us more than our subjectiveexpectations.Weall have some influence on what this reality has to offer,but ultimately, many things are out of our control.The only solution, then, istoadjust our expectations bymanaging our personal desires.Insome spiritual traditions,like Buddhism,the answer - broadlyspeaking - istominimize,and if possible,eliminate desire.Not just the desire of vices, but also thedesirethat leads to the unending process of seekingthat both Siddhartha and Govinda spent their livesinpursuit of.Unfortunately,the likelihood that the average person will forgo desire and find enlightenment is a small one.That said,what anyone can learn to do - which isa healthystepin the right direction - is toexpand their zone of fixation.We all have things we want, and we all have things welookto achieve.But many of these things arefar more negotiable than we make them.Sure, making more money may make your life better off, and of course, winning that prize or capturing the praise of someone you admire can be life-affirming,but ifthere is a world of people who can live completely in peace without these things - and there almost always is, no matter what it is you desire - the chances are that you can,too.When we desire something, wefixateon it.We commit ourtime and our mental energy, and in the process,we develop aone-sided obsessionthatleads tomiseryanytimereality doesnt correspond.This is as true of the desire to be more self-confidentas itis of seeking a specific pleasure.The only way not to fall into this trap is toexpand the zone of your fixationwhen the time arises.Itstoloosen the definition of your desiresso that they can accommodate the feedback given by the objective reality.And thats only possible if youre willing tostep back andlet go.To zoom out and adjust your subjective expectationis tobe free ofafflicti on.BetterQuestions, BetterLifeOne reason we fixate on thingsandthen have a hard time letting go is that we start off on the wrong footWe begin by asking the wrong questions.Almost everything that motivates you to take action starts with a question, whether you realize it or not.The simple reason is thatbefore you desire an answer, you have tofirst define what you are looking for.Most things we seek come fromborrowedideas.Depending on the culturewe grow up in, we aremolded by socioeconomic forces that shape our mindbefore we arematureenough to know better.By the timewe grow up, many of these ideas are so deeplyembeddedinto us that we dont even realize it.The question ofmeaning, for example, is one such case. In the western world, we are growing increasingly secular.Religionis on the decline.You may see that as good or bad, but either way, that opens up a questionWhat is the meaning of life?What, in fact, is meaningful at all? Why?In a predominantly religious environment, the answer t o these questions is so obviousthateven if they occupy your mind from time to time,they dont reallycausemisery because your existing belief gives you an answer.In a secular environment,however,these questions lead many into a spiral ofnihilism, the belief that nothingmatters.Thisfixation, then, more often than not, causes a lot ofundue pain.Now,here is a third approach as formulatedbyAlan WattsIftheuniverseis meaningless, so is the statement that it is soThe meaning and purpose of dancing is thedance.By redefining the context, as shaped by the expression of thequestion, we completely negate a problem, which in this case is the potential pain of living in a meaningless world.As Watts implies,who are youto fixate on meaning in a world that is simply just here?A world that you dont even understand?Maybe the frame youre looking through is the wrong one.Maybe your brain isnt even capable of asking the right question.Questions create context context defines boundaries boundaries determine fixationfixation, then, limits or enhances your subjective ability to live in a way that either invites or repels misery.The solution to most problems isnt to fight them,buttoask betterquestions.The TakeawayBoth Siddhartha and Govindaspent their whole lives seeking enlightenment,butitwelchesnt untilthey simply stopped looking that they found it.The question they had fixated on was the wrong one, and their inability to consider the possibility that theymay have to rethink their initial premiseforced them through a path filled with years and years of the wrong answers.Humans are biologically programmed to desire things.Its encoded in the survival machine that we refer to as our body.This process of desiring, however, leads toanarrow zone of fixation that stops us from experiencing realityin a way that is conducive to avoiding misery.To fight this,we havetodevelop the flexibility toreshape the content of these desiresas we obtain more and more information from the objective world.We h ave to learn tolet go of the incompatiblesubjectiveexpectations that we rigidly anchor to realityso that we canrecastnew ones in a more suitable direction,slowly getting away from the seeking to the finding.It takes a lot of work, and even more courage,to look at yourself and decide that maybe its time you saw things from a different angle, with a different question,but itspreciselythis kind of work that is rewarded.Avoiding misery isnt easy, but it is simple.Its on you to take the right steps.This article first appeared on Design Luck.