How To Make A Mess Of Your Life

Everyone wants happiness. Happiness is the driving force behind almost all of our actions, and even when we are unhappy, we are involved with somehow changing that unhappiness into happiness for ourselves. When we are confronted with someone or something, we either have a compulsion to pull it toward us, that is; we like it or even love it. Or, we push it away, which means that we dislike it, or even hate it. We can see this pulling and pushing in every aspect of our lives as we go about making our decisions every day.

Simple things, such as making out a grocery list, is full of decisions. Should we not buy the ice cream because we are on a diet, or the steak because we are on a budget? Should we buy healthy foods that are more expensive, or rice and potatoes that we can more easily afford?

More complex things, like choosing a mate or choosing a career follow the same process of pulling or pushing. We might push away the manual labor jobs and embrace the mentally stimulating ones, or pull the beautiful men or women toward us, and push the physically unattractive away. We call this making choices, but in reality, we are trying to be happy.

The problem is, when we push away or pull toward us, this is called attachment and aversion. These two, attachment and aversion, seem to be a natural way to live, but when looked at closely, pushing and pulling is the root of our unhappiness. And as long as we push or pull, happiness will avoid us like the plague.
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