The Way Things Are Isn’t The Way Things Have To Be

credit: ebby (license)

Recently, I wrote about the importance of the stories we tell ourselves about our lives.  The way we cast ourselves (victim, reject, center of the universe) effects the way we experience the world.  If we think everyone’s against us, we’ll keep seeing things that reinforce that story.  If we think we’re better than everyone, people will constantly let us down.  We react to things based on the story we believe about our world, and as a result, we wind up perpetuating the story by playing along with it.

But there’s a bigger story, a story so hulking and omnipresent that it warranted a post in itself.  It’s a really shitty story our whole society has deluded itself into believing.  That really shitty story is the ridiculously depressing notion of “The Way Things Are.”

You may not realize The Way Things Are as a story.  That’s part of what makes it so devious (and powerful).  Most people just accept that it really is…well…the way things are.  As a result, they play along with it without realizing they have any other choice.  They take it as a given rather than one way of seeing things.  And since the majority of people are going along with it, it really does become the way things are.

So, How Are Things?

Pretty damn crappy, if you believe the story.

If you subscribe to the general belief in The Way Things Are, life is a pretty grim set of circumstances you can’t control and probably don’t like.  Here are some elements of The Way Things Are philosophy:

• You have no choice but to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for pretty much most of your life.

• You have to do this because you have to have a car, a house, ten credit cards, and a steady stream of stuff and distractions at all times to keep you happy.

• You need to be kept happy because you probably hate your job.  [Lather, rinse, repeat the above 3 phrases as needed.  It’s a nice vicious circle.]

• You deserve lots of things you can’t afford because you put up with the unfairness of the above circle.  Future You can deal with paying for these things.

• Debt is something you only need to think about when the bills come each month.  It doesn’t matter if you’re paying off that flat-screen TV for the next 30 years, because they’re probably going to be 30 miserable years anyway, and the least you deserve is to be able to watch Dancing with the Stars in high-quality HD.

• What you do doesn’t matter.

• Dreams are for the naïve and the misguided.  Resignation is the mark of a real, functioning adult.

• If you don’t already kind of dislike your spouse, you probably will after enough time together.  Kids will only make this worse.

• You should still have kids anyway.

• No one is where they want to be.  That’s just part of growing up.

• No one likes The Way Things Are, but they can’t be changed.  Suck it up, have a drink, go out and buy something.  It’s almost the weekend.

I could go on, but it’s too depressing.  And I think you recognize the story by now.

If We All Hate the Story So Much, Why Do We Keep Telling It to Ourselves?

The thing is, no one is really happy living according to this story.  Any story you have to constantly resign yourself to is not a good one. So why do so many of us resign ourselves to it?

Because we don’t realize we have any other choice.  If we did, more people would be doing something different, wouldn’t they? The fact that everyone around us seems to be keeping their heads down and trudging along makes us think that must be our only option.  So, we all put our heads down and keep trudging, and this grim picture of the world continues to be the way things actually are.

It’s not surprising that most of us don’t think to question it.  Everything around us reinforces the story.

TV shows gives us characters that live mainly in The Way Things Are: dysfunctional families, cube farm workers, harried moms and overworked suits and couples who communicate in nasty one-liners.  We find these shows funny or moving because they portray things we recognize.  They may parody them, or offer a unique spin on them, but they’re still ultimately a version of the world as we think it is.  You don’t see many shows about minimalist, location-independent freelancers living life on their own terms.  And if you did, people would probably think they were completely unrealistic.

Commercials sell us products to help us escape from The Way Things Are.  We deserve that big SUV with dual heat zones and seatback DVD players because nothing else in our lives is going right, and the least we can do is give little Johnny the comfort of knowing we’re keeping up with the Joneses.  (The money we put towards that SUV could fund part of little Johnny’s college education, but what matters is pleasing Johnny, and ourselves, Now.)  We need 5 Hour Energy because we’re exhausted after 8 hours at a desk and only have an evening of drudgery to follow, and it’s easier to guzzle a little bottle of something than find a lifestyle that actually energizes us.

We’re inundated with ways to work around The Way Things Are, to distract ourselves from it, to make it a little easier to live with.  But it, itself, is considered a given.  and if everything around you is operating under the notion that the earth is flat, you have no reason to stop and wonder if it’s not.  You just go on living the best little flat life that you can.

What You Don’t Know

What you don’t know could turn everything upside down.

Did you know it’s possible to sell all your stuff, pay down your debt, and be free to live literally anywhere you want, at anytime?  Did you know you can visit every single country in the world in 5 years?  Did you know playing it unsafe is a viable option?

More and more people are beginning to realize this, and to take action to free themselves from The Way Things Are and instead create The Way Things Ought To Be.  Take a look at some of the blogs listed to the right.  All of these people (real life, ordinary people) are, in their own ways, rejecting the mass delusion and creating the lives they’ve always wanted.  Start reading just a few of their stories.  It’s like someone flipping the Technicolor switch after you’ve been watching black and white all your life.

I’m not gonna lie to you.  It takes hard work and some serious faith to pursue a life on your own terms.  Another reason The Way Things Are has such a stronghold on us is because, shitty and completely miserable as it is, it’s oh so easy to fall in step with it.  But you’re sacrificing something, whichever story you choose to live by.  The choose-your-own adventure stories take sacrifice, hard work, and a willingness to stand out and be different.  The Way Things Are story takes your soul, your dreams, and your day-to-day and long-term happiness.

Guess which sacrifices I believe are the better deal?

It’s your choice.  It’s your story.

Related Posts:

• My T-Rex Kills Your Brontosaurus
• PARKOUR! (Or, How to Ninja-fy Your Life, Even If You’re Weak As Hell)
• The Best Kept Secret: There Is No Such Thing As Luck (post at Perform Destiny)