Regardless of how hard you try
and regardless of how
much self-awareness
you accrue over the years,
dark moments are inevitable.
Especially if you are a
creative and sensitive person,
your proclivity towards
darkness is going to
affect your world in an intense way.
Once you recognize that, the
moment of truth begins.
When you stare at the darkness,
the darkness stares back at you.
It is a momentous
instance in your life.
You either allow it to own
you or you fight back.
The darkness has many forms.
It can have the form of a
shadow, as Jung put it,
it can have the form of
mental and physical pain,
it can have the form of depression and
a general disconnection from reality.
All these forms signify
that one has let oneself go
and surrendered to a dark reality
that was imposed on him or
her one way or the other.
The escape is not easy.
A dark reality, usually,
signals a lack of purpose
and an astute lack of enjoyment
throughout the daily grind.
Most of us are obsessed
with the idea of eternity,
and end up loathing the finite
nature of random experiences.
Just because something
doesn’t last forever
it doesn’t mean that we
should reduce its meaning.
Your capacity to enjoy the
present moment for what it is
and fully surrender to whatever it
can offer is meaningful in itself.
Sam Harris has spent hours
promulgating this idea
and his posits can be
of great significance.
As a matter of conscious experience,
the reality of your
life is always now.
And I think that this
is a liberating truth
about the nature
of the human mind.
In fact, I think, there’s probably
nothing more important to understand
about your mind, than that,
if you want to be
happy in this world.
The past is a memory;
it’s a thought arising
in the present.
The future is merely anticipated;
it is another thought arising now.
What we truly have
is this moment.
And this.
And we spend most of our
lives forgetting this truth,
repudiating it, fleeing
it, overlooking it.
And the horror is
that we succeed.
We manage to never really
connect with the present moment
and find fulfilment there,
because we are continually hopping
to become happy in the future.
And the future never arrives.
Even when we think we’re
in the present moment,
we’re, in very subtle ways,
always looking over its shoulder,
anticipating what’s coming next.
We’re always solving a problem.
And it’s possible to
simply drop your problem,
if only for a moment.
And enjoy whatever is true
of your life in the present.
Presence is all we have.
The moment we realize that,
a paradigm shift occurs in
the way we perceive reality.
Also, whether we like it or not,
we are purpose-driven beings.
Purpose is what allows us to add
more structure to our lives
and eventually have
control over it.
Purpose can manifest
itself in many ways.
It can be an obsession with arts
in an attempt to satisfy the
need for self-expression.
It can be the ambition to change
the world for the better.
It can be whatever the
individual decides it to be.
Once you identify your purpose,
live it wholeheartedly.
Create systems, processes,
goals, and protocols around it.
Find other actors who have similar
purposes and engage with them.
Escape the banality of abstract
living that is defined by others
and assemble your life
around your purpose.
Do that in a disciplined
and, if the circumstance
demands it, obsessed way.
That’s how you overcome darkness.
Hi everyone,
This video was fun to make.
Not only because I think
that it answers a question
that tortures the
minds of many people,
but also because it offers
a different approach
in the way one deals with
modern day conundrums.
As a huge thank you for making
it to the end of the video
and for supporting my work,
I would like to create
another giveaway.
I will send a copy of “Everything
is f*cked, a book about hope”
Mark Manson’s latest
book, to one of you.
Mark is a thinker I admire a lot
and someone with whom I share
a very similar worldview.
I love this book because it
covers a lot of the things
I discuss in my video like purpose,
passion, presence and hope.
All you need to do is like, comment,
subscribe, get notifications,
follow me on Instagram, and
message me on Instagram,
confirming that you did all
that with a screenshot.
I will randomly pick the winner
in a week from now
and I will contact you in your
Instagram account, so stay tuned.
Again, thanks for watching.
See you in the next video.
Adrian out.
