The problem is that after you calm down and meditate, after you understand everybody and nurture all your compassion feelings because “you get it”, people are still people.
After you forgive and understand yourself, after you let go of the past and feel the connection to the present and wonder at the mystery of the future, you also find there is no answer.
Nothing happens.
Your enlightenment does not bring about anything other than a kind of anesthesia for the soul, yet your life is no different and, most important, none of your problems solve by themselves.
You still have to exist just like before.
You still have to go to work to pay your dues and the days will start and end just the same as before.
People know this.
People live their entire lives in a constant struggle to face the fact that there are no more parents or grown ups to solve stuff around them. I think this is what growing up is all about, simply finally being left to your own devices. The less support you are given, the more “grown up” you become.
I’m sorry, I know many will disagree. But this is a lived experience and a subjective truth, I also know many will relate to it.
Solitude and handling your own shit make one more and more “grown up”. And there may be no God to hug you at the end of the line. You can hug yourself though, and I tell you, it’s OK, it feels great actually.
People know inside their selves there is nothing to be found at the end of themselves. So, they do everything in their power to not face that place. They cling to poor relationships, they feed spites and feuds for years, they gossip, they waste their free time on purpose, because, they’ll never say it, but deep inside they are aware of the emptiness of meaning around.
I think it is the defining moment of teenage identity crisis, when, no matter the education, the family, the race, the nationality, we all realize one day two things: nobody really knows anything and that nothing is true in or by itself.
Everything needs to be explained and everything is there to fill a void.