Life provides its lessons if you try to listen, but attentiveness is not natural. It is easier to pretend, ignore, or distract one’s self from the immensity surrounding every moment. Life is complex and yet what often needs understanding seems simple.
How do you reconcile your desires with your responsibilities? I often think about the ego, my “self”. It presents both a barrier and a window to reality. Most of the time, it’s a barrier. It gets between everything and filters my experience like a gatekeeper against unpleasantness. My mind controls experience so much so that I have to second guess my own impressions. Am I getting the right idea? Am I attentive enough to what is actually going on? What am I missing? You can only experience something through the window of the self, but how do you get beyond it? Is it Buddha who preached detachment and self-denial? That seems like just another form of vanity, the masochistic inversion of egotism.
