This quote changed my life.
For me, Alan Watts is like that friend who always tells you what you don’t want to hear when you most need to listen.
Alan Watts can change your life in one sentence.
Reading him is like dissipating all the smog that fills your head after spending the day exposed to all kinds of noise and stimuli.
It can reduce the most complex things to the most simple possible level.
That’s why I read him whenever I feel life is a bad joke that makes no sense.
His texts are a bitter but necessary medicine.
I want to share with you one of those phrases that made my hair stand on end and changed my life forever.
But first, a little context
I have had such a wrong time in the last decade that I cannot stop to smell the flowers.
- I was financially ruined.
- I had the biggest heartbreak in my life.
- I lost 99.9% of my friends.
And now I’m like a lab rat that has received too many electric shocks every time it was offered cheese.
I don’t trust anyone.
And living like that is no life.
But I can’t self-lobotomize and act like I don’t know how the world works and how mean many people can be.
And it hurts to live like that: in a continuous state of alert.
Because there are also good people, and in the end, they end up paying the just for sinners.
When I think about it, I remember Carla Morrison.
Carla wrote her famous song “Disfruto” (Enjoy) to get her ex back.
The song is still viral after ten years.
She failed to get back with her ex.
She married the guy who did the piano arrangements for the song.
Fortunately, Carla saw what was close to her. But she could have lost the love of her life by chasing after someone who wanted to leave.
And this story is the story of my life.
I live chasing after those who reject me.
It’s as if I have to prove to them how much I’m worth so they know they are wrong about me.
And I don’t value who I’m close to because I cannot enjoy the present.
Alan Watts’s spooky quote
That’s why I read Watts last time: to find myself and believe again that I can be happy — that I DESERVE TO BE HAPPY.
I looked for texts that hurt me (In a good way)
Because truths hurt (but they also heal).
And this sentence you are about to read redeemed me (and I hope it does you the same good).
“If happiness always depends on something you hope to achieve in the future, you are in reality chasing a chimera that will forever be beyond our reach, until the future and we disappear.” — Alan Watts
I don’t want to wait to die to be happy.
Takeaway
My happiness (and yours) cannot depend on an uncertain future, on a person who rejects me, is unclear, or is out of my reach.
I cannot live chasing fantasies.
Because fantasy partners, fantasy friends, and fantasy jobs only live in one place: in fantasyland.
And that place doesn’t exist. And as much as it hurts, we have to accept it.
And be content (as bad as it sounds) with the here and now.
Be content with who is there.
With someone who wants to be by your side.
Someone who listens to “Disfruto” with you, and sings, “Let me love you, give yourself to me. I won’t let you down. I want to grow old with you.”
A virtual hug
AG
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