How to Become idealistic?

Idealism

‘We want the good life.’

From a very young age we come to consent to what is demanded of us as we age.

We get indoctrinated with the ideals of life of which we must adhere to.

So much in fact that we become idealistic dreamers who refuse to accept reality. How many people dream of their life further down the road?

---When I’m thirty I will be married.

---When I am married I will be happy.

---When I am earning money, I will be content.

Their lives are consumed escaping to the future and a stubborn refusal to live in the present. They live their lives with the promise of reward at the destination and overlook the journey. Our lives become narcissistically commoditized.

We unconsciously learn that material achievement is the path to living the good life. Life is far too great to waste it on ideals. In doing so we reject our naked selves as acceptable. We turn our very existence into failure that can only be alleviated by accomplishment.

We put the fate of our happiness in others. It is almost as if we are too afraid to live by our own conviction. Life thus becomes about the end and not the journey. The end is the ideal methodology of living based on conformism.

We internally say that marriage, work and family are the stepping stones to happiness. We dismiss our own existence as a means to be happy and thus in this chase of happiness we remain unhappy.
Some of course achieve happiness through materialistic means but it is a hazardous happiness for what becomes of the individual when he or she no longer can achieve?

Very often these individuals use their children’s lives as a prop to further their achievement. If the child achieves, the parent feels happy. But if the child fails the parent too fails. We are doped on this idealism of “the good life.” It is like a rainbow of which gladness lies at its end. But we keep chasing and chasing and never ever reach the end of the rainbow and die having forgotten to live.

We don’t even chase happiness it must be asserted. We chase the labels that we assume will make us happy. Thus, a man says: When I have the pretty wife, the big house and the inflated financial account, then I will be happy.

And the woman says: When I have the in-demand husband, the esteemed job and the family nucleus, I too will be happy. Their happiness is commoditized. It is based on labels that they advertise to their peers. When they win their contemporaries acclaim they thus feel content. Alas it is a diseased happiness that needs servicing just like any addiction and more to the point it is a happiness that will not survive the senility.

The means to be happy as I have referenced throughout these notes is to just be happy to exist in this tense unforgiving universe. Seeking approbation is the devil of our soul. What makes people adhere to the rules of the road? A lot of it is unconscious. Seldom does someone defy the rules and drive erratically because they unconsciously are programmed not to do so.

Just be happy to exist. Be a realist. Life is tough. The universe is indifferent. But find consolation in your lonely existence and try to just be happy to be. Change your perception of what is the ideal life. It is not work and family. The ideal life is simply being alive, so make the most of it. The good life is more than a label. It is a feeling. There is “in love” the label and “in love” the feeling.

Life is but a flicker of light between birth and death and like thunder it disappears so abruptly. If one tries to force the issue in life they will fail. If one tries to find friends, love or happiness, they will fail. These things originate from instinctive spontaneity. One cannot consciously try to have a friend. They are friends. One cannot consciously try to be in love, they simply love. One cannot consciously try to be happy. They either are happy or they are not. Paradoxically one can only find success, love or themselves when they are not looking.

We spend our lives looking for success when existing is the only success. People search and search and are left searching at the end of it all. They search externally and fail to search within themselves. Happiness is not the meaning of life. To love your life is the meaning and from this dichotomy happiness becomes collateral. One cannot try to be happy. No such thing exists.

Try to be grateful to be alive and the happiness will pour from the skies. One must overcome their narcissistic gratification. One should attach their happiness to their own existence and not to another person or object. We are unconsciously trained to only see happiness in relationships and careers. We are doped through education alike to believe that our success lies in them two facets of life.

These are only models of happiness and not final by any means. If one is unconsciously trained to see existence on these two terms they can be trained to see happiness on other terms. You cannot be happy with narcissism even if you possess minute quantities of it. It is a disorder of fear and threats. “If I do not do this, people will laugh at me.

If I don’t marry people will laugh at me. If I don’t look attractive, people will laugh at me. If I don’t work a certain job, people will laugh at me.” Narcissists are to cut to the core of it afraid and that is why they conform, to retrieve admiration, which provides snippets of gratification, but it is a diseased and temporary happiness. Narcissists in order to mature must distance themselves from the herd, which is exceedingly difficult in this world.