🧩 TREE 507: You and what you believe and reality, a matching game
Happy new year! I hope your holidays were marvellous. It’s good to be back in your inbox/Substack app. Skyler and I have exciting stuff planned for 2023. Shall we get get started?
A lot of people believe in God, souls, spirits, angels, demons, spiritual energy, reincarnation – spiritual stuff. I don’t. I didn’t decide not to. I just realised one day 12 years ago that I didn’t. I couldn’t. (It was a bit awkward because I was a pastor at the time.)
When you don’t believe in that stuff anymore your life is supposed to become empty and shallow and meaningless. That didn’t happen to me. My life feels richer, deeper and more meaningful now.
What I’m supposed to do here is sell you the idea that if you join me and give up believing in spiritual stuff, your life will also become rich and deep and meaningful. But if I did the sales pitch, I would be missing the point entirely. The reason why my life is better after acknowledging I’m a materialist is that the way I understand the world matches who I am. I’m inherently not spiritual.
If a person who is inherently spiritual tried to not believe, it would make them miserable. They would be trying to squeeze into a ball gown that didn’t fit.
The challenge – and I think it’s probably one of the most worthwhile challenges a person can take on – is to find a set of beliefs that fits who you really are and also fits reality well enough1 that you can thrive.
Do your beliefs fit the real you?
I asked DALL-E 2 to make a poster advertising happiness juice.
I like how this song sounds like it’s being played through honey (Spotify).
Here’s to another year of growing together!
Jeff
No set of beliefs, by which I mean the lens through which you interpret reality, is perfectly clear. (I’m certain every belief distorts reality at least a little – which is itself a belief that probably distorts reality somehow.) But there are plenty of every conceivable flavour that work well enough.