Don't take life too seriously

You see, we are so often caught in a very peculiar trap. We are convinced that life is a journey, a pilgrimage with a serious purpose at the end. And the goal is to get to that end successfully, meaning with a certain sense of virtue, of accomplishment, to have achieved something, to have left our mark.

​But what if the entire affair is rather more like a piece of music or a dance? The meaning of a symphony is not contained in its final chord. The meaning of the dance is not to get to a particular spot on the floor. The meaning of it all is in the playing itself, in the dancing itself.

​We walk around with a constant low-grade anxiety that we are not doing it right, that we are not living properly. We are forever preparing to live. We think, "I must get through school to get a good job. I must get a good job to have a secure life." It's an endless cycle where the purpose is always elsewhere. It's never right here. It's never now.

​We are like people reading a novel who are only interested in getting to the last page. And so we skim, missing all the poetry, all the drama, all the lovely descriptions just to see how it turns out. And then when we get there, we close the book and say, "Is that all?" The whole point of the book was in the reading, in the living through it. We are missing the show because we are too busy looking for the meaning behind the show.

​This is what happens when life becomes a problem to be solved rather than a reality to be experienced. We build up this enormous structure of seriousness. We are terrified that the audience will see through the cracks, that they will see we are just making it up as we go along. And of course, we are. Everyone is. The secret that nobody ever admits is that nobody really knows what's going on. We're all just playing roles.

​The roles, the doctor, the lawyer, the mother, they are games. And games are fun so long as you don't confuse the game with your fundamental reality. The problem arises when you think you are your role, that you are the mask. Then the game becomes a prison. It becomes serious, and you have to defend it.

​But what is the alternative? We think the opposite of seriousness is frivolity. But that's not it at all. The true opposite of taking life seriously is to see it as play. To see the universe itself as fundamentally playful. Look at nature. Look at a kitten chasing its tail. Look at waves lapping against the shore. They are simply playing. They are expressing themselves. The universe is at heart a musical phenomenon. It is a dance of energy. And a dance has no destination. It is its own reason for being.

​We assume everything in nature has a purpose. The bird sings to attract a mate. But why survive? What is that for? To sing more songs. It becomes a circular argument. It's like saying the purpose of music is to get to the end of the composition. It misses the point entirely.

​The Chinese have a wonderful concept: Wu Wei, often translated as effortless action. It means acting without straining, without forcing. It is the way of water which wears away the hardest rock by yielding. It simply flows. And in that flowing, it accomplishes everything. And they have another word for this attitude towards nature: Purposelessness. To our Western ears, that is an insult, but to the Chinese mind, it is the highest compliment. The mountains just are. The rivers just flow. They are simply expressing their own nature. And in that they are profoundly beautiful.

​Life requires trust. It requires you to let go. To stop trying to hold everything so tightly, to stop trying to control every outcome. If we do not have this trust, we create a world of total mistrust, a world where our own nature must be controlled with rules, laws, and systems. We become so busy measuring life that we forget to live it. We become our own jailers.

​A true scholar in the original sense was a person of leisure who studied things not because they were useful but because they were fascinating, because they were delightful, poetry, art, music, the shapes of shells. This is play. And if you do not have room in your life for the playful, life is not worth living.

​The first step is to see the incredible weight of seriousness we carry, and to begin to wonder: What if we could learn purposelessness? It would feel like the moment you stop striving and simply listen to the rain. It would feel like watching wild geese fly and be hidden in the clouds. It would feel like wandering in a great forest with no thought of return.

​Now, let's look at the dancer. This 'you' that you take so seriously, this ego, this personality, it's a collection of memories, a story you tell yourself. It's a concept, a thought. It is not a thing, but an activity. What you call 'me' is something the universe is doing right here and right now. It is a temporary dancing pattern, a whirlpool in the stream of life. You are not the whirlpool; you are the whole river. You are not the wave; you are the ocean.

​The problem is not that we are acting; the problem is that we are bad actors. We’ve forgotten the curtain will fall. A good actor knows he is acting. He can play the part of a king with tremendous conviction, but when he walks off the stage, he takes off the crown. He knows it was a game.

​When you don't take your ego so seriously, you begin to relax. The constant low-grade anxiety of having to protect this fragile self begins to dissolve. You can afford to be spontaneous. You can afford to be foolish. Your successes and failures are just part of the rhythm of your expression. They are not the final judgment on you.

​Our purpose is not some distant goal. Our purpose is to express what we are right now. And what are we? We are the universe. You are not a stranger in a foreign universe. You are this universe and it is you.

​So how do you live this? You don't try. That's the great joke. You cannot try to be spontaneous. You cannot make an effort to be effortless. All you do is begin to notice the moments when you are already not trying. The moment you are captivated by music and forget yourself. The moment your endless internal chatter simply ceases. In those moments, you are there. You are fully present. And in that presence, there is no problem.

​The goal is not to make those moments happen. The goal is to notice that they are always available. The dance is always happening. Your very breathing is part of it. This is the great liberation: to understand that you are already free. You are already what you are seeking.

​The call to action is not a call to do something new. It is a call to trust. To trust yourself, to trust your own nature. The call is to let go. To join the dance that has been going on for billions of years. You are under no obligation to be serious. You are under no obligation to justify your existence.

​Your only obligation is to be true to the deepest truth of your being: that you are a unique, irreplaceable, and temporary expression of the whole universe.

​So go on, play, experiment, be foolish, be magnificent, fail gloriously, succeed lightly, love, lose, feel it all.

​But whatever you do, don't miss the show by being too busy looking for the meaning behind it.

​The meaning is in the music. The meaning is in the dance. And you, you are the music. You are the dance.