We are.
It’s difficult to accept that we just are because the idea that we need to be becoming, emerging, growing or getting better is important to us at a personal level. If we already are then how will we ever get all the things that we don’t already have? Money is simple enough, but what about love, power, care, respect, awe? If we are – and it is enough, then how will we get more?
It’s much easier to believe in our inadequacies. To believe that there’s things that we are yet to understand that are keeping us from getting what we need. Because if there’s something we don’t understand yet, then there’s something we can work on, then there’s something within our control.
And as long as there’s something we can control then there’s a place to focus our obsessions, then there’s a reason we lack what we desire. This is how we use one illusion to fuel other illusions. In this game of fabrications we find ourselves creating new ways to justify our discontent. New ways to hide from the fact that we just are – and we are because one day we arrived, found it as it was and must now continue to be.
“If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.”
– Yogi Berra
It is.
That’s all it ever could be. The sum of all the things has led to what it is in all its imperfect cruelty it continues to be. Perhaps then even asking that we recognise that it is may be an ask too far, as it is because we are – and we are, at our very nature because we seek to be.
Instead then maybe recognising that hearts break and have been breaking since they began to beat. That the tyranny of oppression has been a core part of the human narrative, just as the fire of revolution has always burned in the bellies of those who can’t stand injustice. That every dreamer’s dream is another’s hellscape and fear has always destroyed those who stand in its way.
Maybe then, if we can recognise that it is because we are – and we are because it is – we can give ourselves just a little more room to be.