Desires.
This desire of ours never stops.
Even if you thought you didn’t have any desires, hence no worries and peace of mind, desires just keep on creeping up and it messes up the inner peace.
Because as life happens, you go through various experiences. And some experiences you like and some you don't. And you feel like to keep on having the experiences which made you feel good.
And now your brain craves for it and tells you to have it always.
Why is the brain telling me to have it?
For evolutionary reasons? For its own better survival as a species?
And you get the feeling that you’re not complete without it. Without that experience, person, material, whatever it is, You feel like something is missing and fixing is needed.
We are not in control of our minds.
There’s a limit we can control.
The rest of the things are already programmed there.
And if you don’t go along that way, the brain punishes you. Punishes you with feelings of sadness, depression, anxiety, and so forth and so on.
It will make you miserable because you’re not doing the things that your brain wants you to do. Should I say the brain, or the evolutionary part of the brain which regulates emotions based on the actions you do?
This part of the brain has a checklist. I am not sure what all the items in this checklist are. But I have a fair clue. It’s based solely on the evolutionary success of the species. We are social animals. So if people are there to love and support you, then you feel good emotions. In such a way, there are numerous items on this checklist.
When the checklist of this particular part of the brain is ticked off, it will give you happy chemicals. Like dopamine, serotonin and so and so.
But if you go against its plan, it will hurt you so hard.
What’s interesting is that, even though it can tell you to stop and it can make you do the necessary things in its checklist, it won’t make you do that.
Guess what it makes you do.
Nothing!!! And it does do something even worse.
It turns on the self-destructive subroutine in your brain.
Then it’s all downhill from there if you are not saved by some miracle,
or by your own inner strength and sheer will.
And guess where all this circus is happening.
Everything is happening inside your own brain.
The same brain which wants to be productive, but wants to stay in bed all day and do nothing. The same brain which wants you to do all the healthy habits yet craves all the unhealthy ones. The same brain which motivates you to go to the gym and workout, but loves to have those extra hours of sleep in the morning rather than sweating in the gym.
Everything is done by the same guy!!! Why! Guess nobody knows.
People say you can control your mind, you can be master of your mind, and so forth and so on. But I guess all those are bullshit. There’s a limit up to which you can have control over yourselves. The rest of the things are already settled in. It’s concrete.
Maybe it’s part of the human experience. Maybe these desires and greed are the things that helped us to survive and advance. What a tricky way of manipulating apes to do such and such complex stuff like Building families, organizations, societies, civilizations, and so forth and so on.
Guess Buddhists are right. Desire is the root cause of all the misery. But what does it then mean to not have desires at all? Are we even human if we are not having desires? What are we supposed to do if we transcend to such a stage? If there are no desires for all the people in a society, what kind of things will they be doing? Sit and meditate all day?!!!
That’s not a very good way to live. That’s like wasting away your life by not doing anything meaningful.
Well, things are only meaningful when we give meaning to them.
What kind of meaningful experiences should we have? Experiences that make us and everyone around us feels good and results in the overall happiness and well-being of everyone sound like a good deed.
Guess we will never know for sure.
We will never know why we are like we are and why we do the things that we do.
