The 5 Lessons 2020 Shoved Down My Throat
By: Jason Henry
Tags: Self Improvement, Personal Development, Life Lessons, Self, Life

Photo by Xuan Nguyen on Unsplash

1. You are not in control

There is precious little that anyone can honestly say that they govern. I lost my connection to others at a time when everything was still in germination for me. That one thing changed the course of my life forever.

So while I was doing what I needed to do to gain control and security, I wasn’t even aware that what I really wanted was oneness with others and life itself.

The pandemic and subsequent quarantine forced me to re-evaluate the notion that I was okay being alone and that the minor bouts of loneliness I felt in the past were normal.

The reality was that there was a wound that I had only partially addressed. But in terms of control, how could I control my life when there were things I wasn’t even aware of? How would I have even thought to bring this into my awareness?

It’s simple. I wouldn’t. Life was the factor that illuminated my darkness.

It’s the same with all of us. There are things we are unaware of that govern what we think, say and do. To think that we are truly in control is naïve.

People have said that the only thing one can control is oneself but based on my experience, even that isn’t always true. As a result, one has to take every moment in quiet observation because life is always trying to show you who you really are.

But if you’re not paying attention or you think you already know the truth, life can’t teach you anything.

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” — Ralph Ellison

2. Embrace chaos or be devoured by it

Since about March I’ve been playing “Where Do We Go From Here?” by Filter several times a month. I played it sober, drunk, high, on shrooms, when running, walking and after sex. Only in December did I start feeling like I didn’t need it as much.

The song (in my opinion) is about wanting to escape from a difficult relationship with someone but it could also be about escaping the difficult relationship with yourself.

And it seems that my listening habits were directly proportional to how I was handling chaos. When I was against what was going on, I would be feeling the existential pinch and craved the song but whenever I surrendered to life, I relaxed and welcomed whatever came next. I’d still play the song but not as compulsively.

To be honest, the only sensible way to live is to embrace what is. I knew that from before but sometimes there are things you still want to try to control because you’re so afraid of what will happen if you let life take over.

It’s almost as if you think life would mess with you, as if it would gain something from its own creation being in turmoil. As if you aren’t life itself.

There may be times when it looks like life doesn’t have your back. However, the reality is that it is you who is betraying life by not trusting that as long as you do your part and no more, everything will be okay.

Whenever we come face to face with chaos and then try to thwart it, we are no different than our favorite comedy characters. We see them on the screen and laugh at their ridiculous antics for solving their perceived problems. But are we any different?

The fact of the matter is that we are all guilty of getting in our own way, but we’ve never stopped to consider that the chaos was actually the path to embrace. We only realize in hindsight that the chaos was the help we needed.

At the very least, embracing chaos will allow you to return to the peace of mind that is necessary to find or recognize a solution. I’ve never heard a good idea from the mouth of a stressed out mind.

“Just let me feel some ease from me.” — Filter

3. This world is rife with scams and illusions

This is a touchy topic because there are some things I consider to be half-truths and other things to be whole lies, but people believe in them. This year I was seeing it in perhaps every industry.

Multi-national corporations, governments, banks, religions and cults of personality were the ones I was all too familiar with. But to then see the vast amount of scam artists acting as if they could boost your business or your ability to play the stock market, I was blown away. I couldn’t believe there were that many people willing to rip people’s hard-earned money from them.

Then, of course, there’s a very real pandemic due to a very real illness that people decided to use to con their conspiracy theorist brethren. Don’t get me wrong. Some people didn’t need any inspiration to believe that the virus was a hoax, but some were tricked into thinking it was.

I think certain illusions based in spirituality were finally scrubbed from my inner eye. To see people I considered leaders in the industry to be con artists was a necessary jolt back to reality. I believed in things that they told me were true but they themselves didn’t actually believe.

As a result, I had to conclude that I was being played the entire time. Now I can’t unsee it. My escapism and magical thinking made me buy into things that were unfounded and untrue.

Did you know that most luxury cars are the prettiest and most unreliable hunks of junk? Vehicles that me and my peers daydreamed about when we were younger are only worth leasing. The performance might be great but you’ll be bleeding money.

Then there was the arguments on either side of the racial divide. I saw one side claiming that there was no systemic racism. I saw the other side making things up or hiding information to back up their arguments against racism. Neither side needed to do this but I suppose when you’re on a team, you have to ham it up? I don’t get why we can’t just decide to be on the side of truth and facts.

“The American Dream never really existed. It was a marketing scam.” — James Altucher

4. People are who they are

It seems like this was the year it finally sunk in. I moved from, “I should’ve known this person was a so-and-so. They’ve been showing me this side for years!” to “Oh yeah, of course this person is a so-and-so. They’ve been showing me this side for years but I thought they wouldn’t do that to me.”

Judging people is about as foolish as judging a barking dog or a timid cat. What else are they supposed to be? What did you expect them to do? Why were you hoping that they would operate differently from how they’re programmed and from what they’ve been doing for years?

In realizing this I’ve moved from, “This person is rude!” to “This is a person who (when under stress) is rude.” I put the “when under stress” part in bracket because in some cases it’s true and in other cases, you can see rude behavior whether or not they’re under stress because it’s a trait that has taken them over.

Moreover, it would be wise to know who you are too. What is the character that you play? You will know the answer to this based on the recurring events of your life. It may not be very flattering but don’t do yourself a disservice by hiding from reality.

When you’re armed with that level of knowledge you can actually enact major changes in your life because you are operating from a different level of awareness.

Judging others is no different from judging yourself. If you judge yourself, you shame yourself into non-action. Because if you took action, that would mean the issue is real and you don’t want that.

Similarly, if you judge others, they aren’t willing to see your argument because if it’s true, then that means they’re “bad,” which triggers shame. As a result, they’ll hide from the accusation and never address the problem.

So instead, just call out what you’re seeing but don’t make the other person or yourself wrong. People are who they are and they do destructive things because they either live in fear or learnt from others who lived in fear.

“What we think of as people’s guilt is their fear. All negativity derives from fear. When someone is angry, they are afraid. When someone is rude, they are afraid. When someone is manipulative, they are afraid. When someone is cruel, they are afraid.” — Marianne Williamson

5. Chasing success is stupid

“Dreaming about being an actress, is more exciting than being one.” — Marilyn Monroe

I wrote about this earlier in the year as it was the most difficult point of the year for me. To summarize, my sister almost blew her opportunity to achieve a highly-coveted goal. Seeing her so distraught triggered my own fears and anxieties.

Fortunately, her story had a happy ending. However, I’m not sure she actually learned the lesson. She may have to stomach this suffering again.

But what is the lesson? Chasing pleasure is a sure-fire way to get bludgeoned with displeasure. In our attempts to get the feel good feelings, the backwards law sets in and gives us the exact opposite of what we want.

But we can’t help it. Our egos want to attach to something awesome to make itself feel more concrete and real. We want money, career success, relationships, etc. but this is because we cannot feel the pleasure that is already here when we embrace the present moment and who we are.

Because I can guarantee that you can get what you want and it will open up another channel for you to experience something unwanted. Then again, do I need to guarantee this? You’ve already experienced it.

You got the man or woman of your dreams, but it didn’t work out. The coveted job had crazy hours that prevented you from doing other things you love. Spirituality made you feel better until it told you that you had nothing left to do but to embrace the emotions that you’ve been running from. Drugs made you feel good until they made you feel sour. Money afforded you new things until those things led you to experience coughing up money that you didn’t want to spend.

Eventually, you realize that there’s no point in chasing anything at all. As a matter of fact, chasing never felt good. What felt good was the potential of getting something cool.

This has been my most successful year ever. I have never been so inundated with positive feedback about my work and who I am in my entire life. The joy I felt this year was something I had been longing for for years.

But you know what? The feeling fades. Then it’s time to do something new. Time to continue to add value in the world. Time to help someone. Time to entertain someone. Time to do some introspection. And then you relax before you start all over again.

I will fail again and I will feel bad again. As a matter of fact, I failed quite a bit this year too and had some unfortunate things said about me and some of my work.

But as long as I’m not trying to gain pleasure in order to hide from the inner ache that is caused by hating the present moment and myself, I won’t be as sensitive to pain. It was pain that helped to get me to the summit anyway.