There is a question in my book, Meditative Questions, that always makes me think:
What is the source of your unhappiness?
Is it your expectations?
I think this is a difficult question to face. If we view it from the perspective of our expectations about other people, it can be very easy to blame other people for our feelings. ‘She made me mad’, ‘he hurt my feelings’, and ‘they don’t care about me’ are different ways that this might be communicated. But is that really how it works? Is that person causing you to feel a certain way…or are you choosing to feel that way?
When we impose expectations on other people, we are establishing our baseline for what needs to happen to make us happy. We shift the blame of our reactions from ourselves to someone else. We put other people in charge of making us happy. (And we stop caring about how our reactions might effect someone else.)
But happiness is and always will be an inside job. No one can make us feel unhappy without our consent.
When we awaken to the reality that we must take responsibility for our own happiness, we stop basing our happiness on the expectations we have of other people. And we stop viewing the world based on our definition of right and wrong. We share love regardless of the choices other people make. Because we understand that we are love.
Namaste.
Photo source: Mexico, my mobile phone :)