Dear Rose Tattoo:

You wrote: “everything I thought was true has turned out not to be”- I believe this is the very reason for your depression and lack of contentment. I believe that if you re-learn what is true, you will find a meaning to your life and contentment. I will explain:

You were promised that “if you go to school, work hard, buy a home, etc you’ll be successful and safe”- believing the promise you did your part in it: you went to school, worked hard and you bought a home. And yet, you don’t feel safe or successful.

There were other promises that failed to become your reality. And so, understandably, you ask: what is the point of living? Why am I here?

We are made a lot of false promises from early in life. “And they lived happily ever after”-

two false promises right there:

1. There is no “ever after”- we do die. Some sooner than later. But the comfort in believing otherwise is intoxicating. People can see that death happens, so they make up scenarios where they can hold on to the “ever after” promise: heaven, paradise earth, reincarnation followed by liberation, and so on.

2. There is no happiness outside very limited periods of time. It is not possible to be happy as a state of being. And yet in the U.S. Declaration of Independence it promises us “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”- to pursue something means to “seek to attain”- but it is not possible to attain happiness. All efforts to attain it fail: we eat more for more happiness but we get bloated and gain weight, and as a result we get sick, distressed, not happy at all. We take drugs, psychiatric or otherwise. The result, narcotics bring very short term happiness, euphoria, followed by the miseries of addiction, and anti-depressants at best make us feel better, sometimes. We buy more (marketing promises…) and yet again, fail.

Back to your question: Does life have any meaning? Yes, it does. Observe nature- there is the meaning, the naked meaning (literally and figuratively). See reality for what it is. Study it. Expose, more and more, those false promises and replace the expectations that follow those false promises with reality.

The more your brain is congruent with reality, the more content you will be. Notice I used the word “content”, not happy. What I mean by content is being engaged in re-learning what reality and what life is about and being way more at peace than you are now.

I hope you post again with your thoughts and feelings.

anita