The fundamental delusion

The fundamental delusion: there's something out there that will make me happy and fulfill forever.

While sitting in my car and waiting for kid's class, the above sentence out of this book hit me right at my face.

It reminds me an experiment I tried to do with myself recently – sitting in my car, doing nothing, but just wait. I failed, immediately, I couldn't just face myself doing nothing for more than 5 mins. There's just some sort of urgency feeling spinning in my mind, even I don't really know what it is. It is not supposed to be like this, I mean, this was the dream state that I imagined when researching buying this car.

What I have is a Jeep Grand Cherokee, one that I have been researched, selected and went through quite some struggles to finally acquire online (I bought a car on Vroom without seeing it physically beforehand, crazy? that's story for another day). Anyone knows me understands I am a diehard fan of Jeep brand – I have a 2-door wrangler that I had driven for 10 years and put lots of upgrade on it. Early spring, I sold my wrangler and chose this grand cherokee instead, as a symbol to end my younger years. A compromise for family, at least that's the way I convinced myself. So this has to be a great choice. Deliberately, I put on many hours to compare various cars online (I literally watched every review video on youtube about this car), I called all the Jeep dealer in the region, almost knowing more features than the sales person there, and eventually chose this very particular one on vroom.com. I have 1000 very reasons to really enjoy this car, however:

• I was imagining I could just sit in any of the 6 seats in this spacious car, look up through the big sunroof, and just watching the sky for a long time. In reality, after 6-month, I never sit in any seat other than the driver seat. Kid though does like to change seats from time to time, but make every seat stamped by the junks he produced, you know this part since the day you sticked that 'baby on board' sign.
• I was imagining I could enjoy the massage seats in a long trip, and drive 6 hours, non-stop. In reality, the first time I used the massage functionality, I just felt it's too light, like itching instead of real high pressure massage in Asian people's standard.
• I was imagining I could enjoy the 10+ McIntosh speakers, and drive lonely on the highway and enjoy the music of the night. In reality, more often, it's used to play kid's songs, and even when playing adults' ones, early on, I realized it's lack of high tone, and even feeling not as good as of that in my old Wrangler.
• I was imagining I could fully utilize the powerful engine to drag my trailer, and go and camp anywhere I want and wake up in the forests.  In reality, this is a family car, and I was always driving at the far outer slowest lane on the highway, just like before.

I realized just like I had 1000 reasons to convince myself to purchase this car back then; equivalently, now I have 1000 reasons to find some unsatisfied tiny things to not fully enjoy it.

The beauty of needing material stuff to realize fulfillment loses at the instance you possess the things. Because true fulfillment comes from inner, never from outside circumstance.

Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Thus, you'd better choose it very carefully. source

The constant "nexting" thing and the pervasive anxiety. I need to admit that the thing I spent most time in my car, no matter waiting or driving, is planning the next thing.

It's always the next thing, then the next thing, the next thing after that – Planning for myself, and planning for my kid. It's just so hard to be present.

I think as a live creature, our mind is built for preparing for future to be equipped to survive. So how does our future-oriented mind know what to prepare in future? the mind relies on one thing to prepare - the past. So our mind is constantly toggling between the two opposite states - planning the future and regretting the past.

It's such a big topic that I don't have a definitive solution. But as a matter of fact, recently, by chance, randomness reading leads some resources to me that I will paste here:

1. a youtube list for world mental health day

2. Book on the power of now

Happiness, love and passion... are not things you find – they're choices you made. source

That's it for today!