When I was a kid I wanted a blue bike.

When I finally got the bike I was happy,

but not as happy as I thought I'd be.

That's when I first had the thought that

something's not quite right.

Steven Tyler of Aerosmith said it best:

"Something's wrong with the world today."

I'm sure Leo Tolstoy would agree.  The 

great Russian novelist, whose seemingly infinite 

capacity for feeling, dredged up all the absurdities 

and cruelties and stupidities of being a human.

I read his magnum opus "War and Peace."

His description of a country lane lined with

towering trees made me weep.  

But even with his appreciation of beauty and his 

ability  to impart so much joy, Tolstoy woke up one day and 

asked, "DOES ANYTHING HAVE ANY MEANING?"  This strange 

little question was like a splinter in his mind.  It got 

so annoying at one point that he wouldn't wear a bathrobe '

because he was afraid he'd hang himself with the tie.

These are my kids, Mila and Lennon. They don't ever 

want to hang themselves. In fact, they're happy doing almost 

any darn thing. Even playing $2 guitars on the streets of Acapulco.

Why do children seem so normal, so human, so happy?  

They certainly don't see the world like us more  "reasonable" 

adults. They must have a different set up beliefs.  How 

else could you account for the joy my kids are experiencing 

jumping up and down in the gutter on a rainy day.  

I used to play in puddles, but by the time I got to college 

I had more serious things to do.  Maybe I was too serious.  

After studying all night for a test, I feel asleep at my desk.

In a panic that I missed the test, but still completely 

asleep, I ran down a crowded dorm in my skibbies

screaming, "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important 

date." I earned the nickname, "Tighty," as in Tighty-Whitey.

That's kind of our life in a nutshell: we start out puddle 

jumping and end up sleep walking in our underpants.  

The good news is that we don't have to say asleep.  In fact, 

almost every story, every religion, and every work of 

art acknowledges that we're sleep-walking in our underpants.  

But what's even more interesting is that most of them 

show us how to wake up.  Maybe even waking up to the 

joy of puddle jumping that we once experienced as children.

This motif between ignorance and wisdom, darkness and 

light, is called DUALISM.  And if you look carefully 

enough, you'll see it everywhere.  

The great philosopher Plato said we're all enslaved 

in an underground world of illusion and false beliefs, 

but have the potential to escape to the world of light and truth.

In the Matrix, Morpheus offered Neo a red pill and 

blue pill; one leads to the truth, the other 

to the world of comfort and ignorance.

The Matrix, of course, stole this theme from Alice in 

Wonderland. Alice chose the red pill and discovered 

how deep the rabbit hole actually goes.  In other words, 

reality is pretty different than our naive beliefs.

Religions also have this dualism motif.  Christians 

have the idea of heaven and hell . . .

Buddhists talk about the the suffering we experience

in the world of Samsara and our ability to achieve 

peace and tranquility, called Enlightenment . . . This is

a picture of the Buddha.  He seems pretty chill.

Is there a way to wake up from sleep-walking in our underpants 

and return to the exuberance of childhood?  This stern looking 

man believes we can.  This is Pierre Hadot, a French intellectual

who says that philosophy can deliver us from our darkness and

general stupidity.  But one thing he says we need is to make

a choice to live philosophically, which is essentially the idea

to critically exam every belief we take for granted.  Because

all of our suffering stems from our acceptance of false beliefs.

Nobody attacked our naive and untested beliefs more 

vigorously than this strange looking man with a completely

insane mustache, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Despite his strange grooming habits, Nietzsche challenged

one of our most cherished assumptions: that suffering is bad

and ought to be avoided.  Of course we all operate with this 

belief, but the reality according to Nietzsche is that not 

all pleasure is necessarily good for me and not all suffering

is necessarily bad for me.  In other words, suffering is normal.

I don't think Nietzsche would take his morning coffee in this cup.

If one were to examine those moments in their life that 

gave them the most joy, most would agree that they came 

from events that required the most effort and hard work.  

This is what Nietzsche called "Self-Overcoming."  He hated

inborn talent and natural gifts.  The secret to power and happiness

is simply to live a life with the greatest amount of self-overcoming.

Bethany Hamilton was attacked by a 15-foot tiger shark

when she was 13 years old and lost her arm.  Imagine what 

she had to overcome to experience the joy of surfing again.

All I can say about her is DAMN!!  And guess what, by her own

accounts she's not only really happy to be alive, she's stoked

every time she catches a wave.

But to develop the skill of self-overcoming, one must be

ready to cultivate suffering and hardship, because that's

the only way we can develop the necessary strength.  One must

become a lover of their fate--Amor Fati.  You can't hide from 

your suffering through fantasy and hope, and one can't merely 

endure, but one must actually fall in love with everything that

is a part of their facticity. That's a big philosophical word for

accepting the truth about their existence.  It's like always saying YES.

Actually, it's more like saying:

Even to the stuff that we don't want to say HELL YES to, like 

when we get a traffic ticket, betray a friend, fail a test, 

embarrass yourself by throwing up at a party, lose your job, etc.