The game is rigged, but what if you could enjoy it anyway?
Almost two-hundred years ago, a strange romance began in Denmark. A young intellectual by the name of Soren Kierkegaard met by chance a glowing and radiant girl called Regine Olsen, and subsequently began to court her over a long period of time. Kierkegaard eventually managed to muster up the courage to ask her to marry him, and they got engaged. However this is when the young philosopher's mind started to spin out of control.
Almost immediately he began to doubt if he had made the right choice – not if this was the right woman for him, he was already certain of that. His primary concern was the effect that marriage would have on his intellectual pursuits. Young Soren's mind was already furiously contemplating a number of topics which would in the future lead him towards becoming a seminal figure in European philosophy. In order to get to that point however, he believed that he had to abandon all hope that his engagement to Regine could possibly work. If he followed the path of love, he would betray his true calling. But as it became clear to him until his dying day, following his true calling would mean missing out on many of life's most profound experiences – including falling in love.
In what could possibly be one of the strangest failed love stories of all time, Kierkegaard called off the engagement and devoted himself to authoring a number of landmark books, all of which contained the phantom of the life with Regine that he turned away from.
I find this true story to be emblematic because it is a brilliant example of someone following "the path of least resistance". By this I mean the unifying theme amongst most schools of thought, that it is to our benefit to (to quote a favourite movie of mine) "let go, evolve, and let the chips fall where they may". The idea is, in a sense, that by lessening the degree to which we are attached to others, things, and the world in general, the more we are able to liberate ourselves from disappointment, fear, sadness, and anger.
But there is one aspect of this that bothers me. Let's assume that we have liberated ourselves from all suffering, that we have cleared all the obstacles and temptations that could possibly block our way. My question is: blocking us on our way to WHAT?
I presume the answer is peace, liberty, fulfillment, meaning, and true purpose. Ok, fair enough, I can't argue with that. But my point is that we can become so engaged in the idea of clearing obstacles from in front of us, that we forget that the whole point is to actually GET THERE!
The goal is not to have the clearest path, but to actually walk it to the end. And there are certainly ways to get there, regardless of how many obstacles you find in the world. This also over-turns what is perhaps the biggest illusion blocking our way: that we can somehow clear the path once and for all and free ourselves from suffering.
The hope that we can somehow clear away all the pain of the past or perhaps even the possibility of pain in the future, is something that is frequently expressed in my private practice. This is where the real work starts, because such a reality is simply not possible.
Life will hurt, no matter what path we choose. Much like young Soren demonstrated, all our choices come with a heavy cost.
But perhaps, just maybe, we can bear this burden with a cheeky smile, because we know that even though the game of life will at some point end, we can nevertheless enjoy playing it on our own terms.
