The Big Lie

Transcript

Welcome, beautiful thinkers!

I’d like to talk to you about the Big Lie.

What is the Big Lie?

The Big Lie is that one day things will be better. Or one day, things were better.

There is a certain cliche that I see in Spanish.

Sometimes when people write it on comments on videos, and they would say something like, “We were happy. And we didn’t even know it.”

That kind of nostalgia that we have for our youth, our childhood, all the things that we did, the time that we spent playing in the backyard without friends, without really noticing, or being grateful for the carefree lifestyle that we were living.

And now things have changed.

Oh, now we have responsibilities.

And now our live is so difficult, at least in theory.

I don’t think it’s really like this, I think things are more or less constant.

Of course, we face some some difficulties at some moments that present us with unique challenges, challenges we might not yet have faced.

Then what happens?

We look back on those times just a few short years later.

And we say “Wow, I was really challenging myself. At that point in my life, I was really pushing myself to the edge, I was really facing the world in a way that I had never faced it before.”

Those were the best times in my life.

We didn’t know that at the time, we were happy, and we didn’t even know it.

Now, what will happen today, we face whenever challenge, whenever unusual situation, we get bored, waste our time, or do something productive, enjoy ourselves in whatever small way or challenge ourselves, whatever grand way.

These times are the Best Times, these are the good old days, they always will be and they always have to be.

We don’t necessarily notice it in the moment.

But we can, we can show our gratitude for those struggles, for those difficulties, and for those sweet moments that we share with our friends and family.

Those small things which make up life.

Big lie, that one day things will be better.

That they will somehow fundamentally be different, or that they were fundamentally different.

No, they are always more or less the same.

There is a saying that says in the Way of the Samurai, it says, “If man or, if a samurai, masters the present moment, he masters everything, that is all a person must master.”

Likewise, if we enjoy the present moment, if we are grateful for the present moment, that is all we need to be grateful for.

Working to the past or to the future, we will not find salvation.

Things will not be better.

They probably won’t even be worse.

Just different. Just a constant stream with many rocks and pebbles sticks, floating in it.

That is our lives.

So, easily and freely let go of wanting things to be different.

Let go of the big lie.