As adults we make the rules we live by. We choose whether or not to pay the bills or pay for other things. We choose who to live with. We make decisions and choices from the available options on how and where to live. We make meaning out of what we see, experience, and interact with. Life is an overwhelming onslaught of input and with freedom comes the necessity of dealing with all of it or choosing what not to deal with. One of the ways we do this is to start forming the physical laws of our life. We add to the scientifically proven ones such as gravity works, electromagnetics is a thing, and conservation of energy only works in the lab by creating things such as “I’ll always fail at anything technical”, “Everyone turns against me”, “I need to work hard to get just to barely get by”, “I’ll have the life I want someday”, “It’s already too late to start” and so on.
These rules are arbitrary yet we make them into facts of our existence and then live according to them, making them self-fulfilling prophecies. They can even feel as real as science if we’ve never experienced anything different. But they are NOT real. They are a coping mechanism inside us which has become a tyrant dictating how we should experience life. The great thing is that tyrants can be over thrown. Dictators can fall. Popular uprisings, coups, and revolutions happen and better ways of life can flourish.
The hard thing is that people don’t want to change. Internal change is one of the hardest things to contemplate let alone undertake. It feels like we’re trying to take the one last block out from under the Jenga tower and expecting it to just hover. We’re prefer anything else and will problem solve a million external ways to have the change done to us, forced upon us, grafted on, magically induced through some method that someone else invented as a miracle cure…silly walks, special hats, magic jewelry, hanging upside down while reciting the Magna Carta backwards..whatever it takes. All to avoid the one thing we are desperate not to do: stand up to ourselves.