The Secret To Happiness In Life

I remember when my daughter told me what it was that finally lifted the gloom of her years of teenage angst.

"It was something you told me when I first came up to NH to live with you after mom died," she said.

I was surprised.

"You told me that these weren't the best years of my life. In fact, you told me that these were probably the worst years of my life, since they're transition years and years when I'm being formed into what I'll be as an adult."

"So, why did that make you feel better?" I guess I hadn't really considered that she'd even heard me say anything those initial months as we'd struggled to get used to being a newly formed family of two.

"All my life, I'd been told 'Enjoy yourself now, because these are the best years you'll get in life. Don't waste them.' I wasn't having fun, so I was sure that I wasn't ever going to have any fun. You told me that wasn't true."

"It's not true. Being an adult can be lots of fun. Having the choice to be who and what you want to be is pretty amazing."

She smiled. "That's what I mean. I knew I didn't blow my only chance already. I could still be happy someday. That took a lot of pressure off me."

Today, 15 years later, she's happy and has fun friends and people who loves her, and two very cute little children that she really gets a kick out of. I was right. She loves being an adult

The secret to happiness in this life is akin to what I told my teenage daughter, but it's bigger and much more of a secret than even that bit of truth I shared with her. In fact, this secret is one that many folks really have a hard time with when you tell it to them. Still, I'm going to share it with you anyway. You do what you want with it.

The truth is that this life you're living is the second stage of a two-stage process of gestation that each human being endures before emerging as the completed and viable being that it actually is intended to be. That may seem a bit mundane as far as secrets go, but the implications for each person engaged in this gestational process are enormous.

Your first stage of gestation involved the construction of your corporeal body, and none of you had any control over how that first stage went. Most of us missed out on the "lucky sperm lottery" with its tall, slender, beautiful and rich bonus package, and while we generally get by with what we were handed, most of us would've preferred to have had a bit more input on how that gestational stage was handled. Most of us also believe that that stage was our only stage of gestational development, and that this life we're living is our only shot at life, and (like my daughter believed about her youthful years) that these are the only years we'll be given any chance at achieving happiness and success. The good news is that most of us are completely wrong about what we believe.

This life you're living - this second stage of gestational development - is completely controlled by you. This is the good news. The bad news is that most people have no idea that this is what corporeal life actually is, and it's bad news because they let circumstantial default and other people craft their true and final version of self for them. And while neither circumstance, nor anyone else, has it in for any of us (beyond the usual enemies we all make as life progresses from one circumstance to the next), it's also true that neither circumstance, nor anyone else, is actively trying to ensure that we don't cripple our ultimate selves through our own inattention to this self development process.

After all, like us, no one around us realizes that we're all forming our eternal selves as we live from moment to moment. We're all too immersed within the drama of life, and easy prey for the layers of distraction that shoulder their way into our field of vision. How can anyone expect to focus on self development with all this going on around us and so much that needs to get done if we're to be successful at......
 ....at what?

Well, at being productive members of society. The usual stuff. Paying bills, keeping a roof over our heads, improving our lot in life, progressing in our careers/social standings /enlightenments/spiritualities/artistic-intellectual achievements/ whatever it ends up being that makes life worth living. Basically, living a successful life.

And a successful life is....?

I'll tell you the truth, and it's still a secret to most people. A successful life is ensuring that this second stage of your gestation gives you the tools and capacities to be the best version of who-you-are that you can craft. Building a business empire will give you nothing in gestation unless you build it happily and through your brilliance and personal strength of character. If you do, then your corporeal empire will preview your eternal empire of brilliance and honor, as a true wonder to the eternal realm.

If you build that business empire through guile or bitter competition, then your ultimate self will be severely crippled, since in the eternal realm, the value system is based on character, not wealth, and there's nothing to hide behind - no shelter from the truth of what you've made of yourself. Better that you'd have been a positive and loving economic failure in your corporeal gestation, and suffered through those indignities with courage and grace. Then, those powerful attributes would have transformed your existence upon birth into the eternal realm, and you'd be one of the fortunate few. Like the lucky sperm club members of the corporeal phase.

So, what's the good news? It's obvious. You are in complete control over your ultimate success, and while you're still in this second stage of gestation, you can work to become whatever and whomever you wish to become during the rest of your own personal forever. You didn't get the opportunity to choose your birth parents or manage circumstances while a fetus, but you do get to completely determine the final version of yourself.

So, when you get undercut by some predator (as we all do from time to time) and get bested by some hyper achiever (as happens eventually to each of us) it's helpful to remember that losing in this corporeal phase is in not making the effort to learn from such experiences, and in not being grateful for the chance to learn from them. These are the events that teach you to be a better, stronger, and more significant human being when this corporeal development stage is completed.

It also helps to realize that before you were even born - as you were being formed in your mother's womb - you'd already won the biggest jackpot in all of existence.

You're a human being, and that's as monumental a gift as can possibly be given by circumstance, or fate, or however you want to view it. Even a suffering human being is more blessed than the most contented dining room table ever made. Or the biggest rock in the field. And as an added bonus, that suffering human being has the opportunity to be consciously grateful for the pain and agony, and to view such circumstance as the elite training course that it can be for such a magnificent person. Be happy knowing that with each blindside you accept with grace, dignity and magnanimity you graduate from yet another course in becoming a quality human being.

This is how you can enjoy every moment of life. This is how your eternity becomes your most wonderful phase of existence.