Society has ignored this one piece of ancient wisdom, but it could obliterate most mental health struggles
People ask:
‘Why do today’s youth seem so sensitive? So much more than previous generations?’
People ask: ‘Why are more people more anxious than ever?’
At the same time, can you deny that society is moving in a direction that (obsessively) seeks harmony?
Our inventions, our apps, how we teach our children, how we run our families, and how we communicate with each other…
We want good.
We don’t want bad.
We desire harmony.
We grow up expecting and wanting peace.
We view disharmony as inherently bad.
We arrange our lives so that we never feel strange, odd, or unhappy.
We protect our children from the roads and strangers and ensure they’re always watched.
We choose professions that align with our passions, star signs, and Myers-Briggs personalities.
We cut out ‘toxic’ things and toxic people from our lives because they make us uncomfortable.
(We were the ones who judged it as ‘toxic’ — so it’s all subjective, but, like, whatever).
Toxic this.
Toxic that.
Dangerous this.
Dangerous that.
Positive thinking this.
Positive affirmation that.
Seek harmony.
Seek pleasure.
Avoid pain.
Avoid hurt.
And yet…
We’re more unhappy than ever.
Mental illness is skyrocketing.
Almost everyone is complaining about anxiety.
There are many variables, yes.
But what if one tiny mindset shift could change everything?
What if one line written by a poet hundreds of years ago could be revisited and reflected on so that true harmony was restored?
Persian medieval poet Rumi said this:
“All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.”
Seek disharmony to find peace.
Can you believe that?
Holy shit. If this holds any merit, might it mean that in our safety-obsessed, no offence-caused, politically-correct world, we’ve been looking in the wrong place?
He’s not even talking about accepting disharmony, but actively seeking it.
Could it be that — at the very least — being OK with disharmony, struggle, ugliness, and fear — could be the source of our joy and peace?
I believe it can.
Could it be that bringing in more challenge, risk and more ‘hard’ things into our lives — this could be the ticket?
Life is about experiencing it all in its fullness. It isn’t about cherry-picking the bits we want while pretending other things don’t exist.
That isn’t how this works.
Believing we can choose is the very thing causing the bulk of our anxiety.
We move into a more illusory experience of reality every day.
Spending our lives on social media presents a false sense of what reality is truly about.
Look around you right now.
The world isn’t all joy.
There is pain.
And when we are open to seeing it, feeling it and accepting it.
The resistance is gone.
The wishing and hoping are gone.
The straining and stressing are gone.
Our anxiety is gone.
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