Chuck Bass teaches me about Buddhism

im going to come out and say it-- I learned something really great from watching gossip girl last night.

One of my few times actually watching the show and it blew my fucking mind. Besides all the cute clothes, core bitchiness, and odd resemblance to The Hills... there were bits of wisdom.

So my revelation came when Chuck was trying to comfort that one girl with the really bad hair extensions and said this, "The world you’re looking at only exists from the outside."

Wooooow!

How many worlds have we created with our expectations that are only real because they are not fulfilled?

This is one of those revelations that feels really good, at first.

you start to realize that everything you want may not really exist in the form you imagined. every rose has its thorn. a life full of money, gossip, and parties only seems substantial when you don't have it. Chuck, for example, has all those things, and yet is probably the most empty person, and fills his void with drugs and girls. Yet everyone around him envies his lifestyle. go figure.

"what makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others."

is there a way to have goals that aren't distorted by our wild imaginations, and have a world to strive for where our vision is attainable?

I was going to ramble on about how to pick goals that suit you, and research people who are happy. but then i realized the question above can be put more simply-- what should we want?

In our culture we are brought up to be very goal oriented. find out what you want and then do it and then happiness will inevitably follow. but how many times has that actually worked?

again like in gossip girl...

i want money, i am going to be ruthless until i get it, and yet now everyone hates me. what happened?

why didn't things work out?

is it because money was the focus...?

okay lets try it with a different goal:

i want to have a better relationship with my friend, i am going to talk to her about what could be better in the friendship and point out things that need to change, and then... she resents me.

shit! this scenario didn't work out much better.

this is when realizing that there is no perfect world becomes depressing.

it is sad to think that most of the things we want can not be fulfilled (even the ones that seem to have the best intentions).

I remember when i was in my Buddhism class in college and the professor goes, "everything is nothing. you have nothing. you don't have a relationship with anyone. not even your mom."

we all giggled. and someone even said i didn't realize it until now but I HATE BUDDHISM.

i will admit, i left that class a little depressed, and thought how can this be a religion... it makes me so sad.

But as i let the truths of what Buddhism was saying settle in, i realized that everything is nothing. it is actually freeing. we don't need anything because everything out there is nothing.

at the root of all this unhappiness are our desires. our desire to be like someone else, our desire to have a bunch of money, our desire to have a perfect career. they are all bullshit and we keep thinking that if we drink in more stuff, then we will get closer to being whole. but if we can stop wanting all this shit then we can actually be whole.

to come back to the question --what should we want?

we shouldn't want anything.

is that realistic though?

you may be thinking, well food is a desire, shelter is a desire, relationships are a desire, and those all are necessary for our existence.

but i think it is maybe the unrealistic-ness of these desires that gets us into trouble.

for example, i used to think that i couldn't live without chocolate. and like most girls we go in search of chocolate when we are sitting alone watching gossip girl. (oddly enough).

it again becomes this desire to take in something to fill a void.

i think this should be our task -- categorizing our desires.

is this what i really need... or is this just something that i am using so that i can avoid a much greater emotion?

"when we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere"

this ended up being a really long post, but in short: examine your desires.

are you wanting something that doesn't exist?

are you wanting something because you think it will make you whole?

are you wanting something because of misguided emotions?

"what we think we need and what we think we want is all bullshit" -my dad (the politically incorrect buddhist)

to try and end on a happier note...

if you can control your desires, happiness is within your grasp.

right now pretend that you had everything you ever wanted.

let yourself smile and think that you have it.

you can see that happiness is a state of mind and is not truly contingent upon what kind of car is really sitting in your garage.

go about your day today pretending you have everything, live in the world you have always dreamed of.

if it feels good and makes you happy then why not keep that mentality going every day, because believe it or not you just found a way to be happy.