Risk & Responsibility: The 2 ideas to unlock your fullest potential.

The problem with doing the right things is that, it’s risky. Sometimes, it’s just sheer responsibility. Problem with risk and responsibility is that nobody likes them. It’s human nature to be risk averse. And responsibility is just not sexy. You can live a very comfortable life, with most of its necessities, without taking much risk and responsibility. Human progress and the structural stability of our current society has enabled us to goof off all day, keep a menial job and still have a home, a spouse, children, friends and of course, food, clothes and medicine. You can easily numb any feeling of boredom or meaninglessness with drugs, alcohol, TV and smartphones. So why take risks and responsibility?

When you go out of your way to do something properly, it’s a risk. When you go out of your way to do something different, or put a little extra effort or stand up for something you believe in, it’s a risk. Maybe your efforts are a waste. Nobody may show up to your comedy gig. No one may ever buy your book. The people responsible for your promotion might not notice your efforts. The new voice modulation technique you learned might make people laugh at you if you implement it. At least in a conforming life, you get expected results. Your business may fail, but your menial job will deposit a certain amount every month. The new career switch you planned could turn out disastrously wrong. All the trouble for nothing. Whereas, your smoking habit at least gives you pleasure right now, and you might even get lucky and not get cancer!

But, there’s a caveat. Proper, calculated risks, increase the probability of a more desired outcome. Yes, there’s some uncertainty. But, even a casino loses 40% of the times. It’s the 60% probability of success, that makes money for a casino (and that’s why it’s bad to gamble for the individual gambler, as he’ll lose 60% of the times). Thus, each risk you take, starts an invisible slot machine, which randomly rewards you. Calculated risks, make you lose less than you gain. Thus, overtime, the profits accrue. The compounding of your day-to-day rewards, take your life to a better place than it was tomorrow.

What about responsibility? Why tell the truth when lies get you better results at the moment? Why do nice things for people if there’s nothing to get from it? Isn’t it just smarter to lie, cheat, steal at every opportunity you get? Why not vent all my anger on someone innocent if I feel like it? Why care about the proper education of the future generations? You know for a fact that people prosper even without taking much responsibility. There are examples of unearned success everywhere. There are corrupt rich people everywhere. It’s even the easier route to take. Why bother doing something different?

A cancer cell is prosperous, but it’s not good. Good triumphs prosperity, even in your individual experience. Prosperous people soon realize, what really matters is a sense of fulfillment. Meaning is non-negotiable. We are after all some microorganisms waiting for death on a small planet. Our certain death, our lack of perfection and all our vulnerability is what makes life challenging. And facing up to this challenge using all your abilities, gives it meaning. The meaning is in the fight. The rules of the fight matter. Taking shortcuts wins you some individual battles, but you lose the fight. Simultaneously, you make yourself shallow. Instead of being useful to others, you start becoming harmful. And when enough people adopt this way, the world faces the horrors alike the ones in the 20th century. On the other hand, you’ll be amazed if you think how much of a better place the world would be, if everyone took their fair share of responsibilities. That reality will never come until you are one of the good guys. An irresponsible person lives burdened by the knowledge that the world would have been a better place if he did not exist. Can any of the things you achieve in life be an antidote to that?

Stop the pursuit of happiness. Life is a challenge, not a buffet.

Life is not here to entertain you or amuse you or please you or give you something. It’s only function is to challenge you. The metric it challenges you on is consciousness.

There’s nothing to get. Nothing to keep. You’re not judged by how much you’ve won, got, made… Or how talented you are. You are judged by how conscious you are at each adversity.

How do you know if you are doing well? By the amount of peace you feel. If you lose your calm, become irritated or vicious or suffer unnecessary by angry or punishing thoughts, you fail. If you are conscious and at peace, feeling joy and sense of aliveness, you pass.

That’s the primary metric that you are judged on. There are secondary ones too if you want to take it up a notch.

Be courageous. Don’t let fear stop you. Explore what you are afraid of. Slay the dragon.

You have to be conscientious. By conscientious I mean industrious and orderly. Be consistent. Let your potential be realized for the good of humankind.

You have to take responsibility for what happens to you. Accept the incompleteness, the emptiness, the suffering of life voluntarily and do your best.

If you still believe life is here for your pleasure, you’ve lost touch with your mortality. You’ve lost touch with how ugly and unforgiving life can be. You’ve failed to realize that, accomplishments, pleasures and everything that you think will make you complete, are like layers of an onion. They feel good for a second but then you need more. Soon You seek something different. And soon you suffer because of what you cling to/ want/ don’t want/can’t get. Why is that? Because we are incomplete mortals. We are not all powerful. We are vulnerable. Life can’t help but be a challenge for us. It’s fundamentally designed that way.

 

Mystics say, you are emptyness, yet you are one with the world. Here’s the rationale behind that claim.

Some mystics say that you can’t find yourself in the world, that whatever you think is you, is not you.

Whereas, some others might say (often the same ones) that, you are one with everything. Everything is you. There is no divide.

Well both of those viewpoints are right.

It all depends on the lens you use to see everything.

You see, we often see the world with an objective lens, while using a subjective one to experience the inner realm. That is where the ‘illusion of division’ starts. See the world with an objective lens, and there is no difference betweens things that happen inside your body, and the things that happen outside of your body. It’s all objects, atoms, particles, reactions and energy.

Well, use a subjective lens and everything is now just another object in the ocean of your consciousness. Your thoughts, the walls in your room, the sensations of your breath, the sound of water dropping… Where’s the divide?

Again, only when you say that your thoughts and senses are your subjective experience whereas the walls in your room are objects, you start seeing a division. But that is like using Celsius scale to measure the temperature of one thing and then using Farenhite to measure the temperature of another thing of the same temperature, and saying that they have different temperatures because the readings in different scales don’t match. Not a very sane way of deduction, is it?

So next time you open your eyes after some meditative moments, try to keep the subjective view of things as you take in the outside world. See how similar your experience is for both your inner realm and the world outside you. Is there any difference in the way you experience the voice inside your head and the voice of someone else?