Life is a curious thing.  People can spend their entire life striving for a particular something, and then when they finally achieve it they feel empty and incomplete.  Sometimes this is on a very obvious level with things like money.  A person may have a lifelong dream to become a millionaire, and then when they finally get there they decide that a yearly income of a million dollars is not enough.  Now they are sure that the feeling they have been chasing needs more, like 10 million a year, maybe 100 million, maybe even a billion.  The basic story is that there is never enough no matter how much you have.  How can that be?

Psychologists and sociologists have studied this relative to achieving happiness, and the results show that once you have enough money to feed, clothe, and shelter yourself, more money does not increase your happiness.  If anything, the more money you have past meeting your needs, the more stress you have.  So what is it these people are seeking?  Money is just an example here, we could be talking about fame, happy family connections, importance, love, power,  baseball cards, anything.  People always seem to be either chasing something that they believe will make them happy or at least okay, or they are bemoaning how the lack of that something has ruined their life.  This pattern appears to be almost universal – I see it all over the place.  At the same time, I see many people actually reaching their stated goals and still feeling frustrated and like something is missing.  Why is this?

I have a perspective on this that may contribute to a bit of understanding, or may not.  From what I see, half the folks are struggling to fill some empty void inside themselves with what they believe is good stuff from life.  The other half is constantly driven to try to impose their will on life and make reality over in their own image.  Both of these drives, in my world view, are reflections of a basic dualistic truth in our lives.  This dualism presents a major problem for most folks.  Everyone prefers singular truths – one right way, one goal, one direction.  Two or more truths, particularly seemingly opposing truths, confuse and annoy people.  Yet, I believe our lives are designed to be dualistic in nature.  We have a right brain and a left brain which work very differently.  We have two hands, two feet, two of most aspects of the body, and yet we want to persist in seeing the world from only one perspective.

The dualism I see is a life agenda that involves two very different focuses – one on connection and the other on self-creation.  My perception of life as a dualistic endeavor is by no means new.  Its roots go way back to early naturalistic philosophy in China about 300 BC that later became a central perspective of Taoist philosophy.  Back then the primal energies of life were seen as divided into two interdependent energies called Yin and Yang.  Each half contains its opposite and flows from its opposite.  This is very different than the dualism of modern psychology which sees dualism as the conflict of opposites like good versus bad or right versus wrong.  Modern psychology reflects the modern bias towards singular truths and sees duality as stress-causing conflict.  Taoism sees the same dualism as two interdependent perceptions of life that feed each other and flow from each other.  I subscribe to the Taoist philosophy.  My belief is that it is the modern form of conflict-based perception of dualism that is producing the stress and emptiness we see so much of today.

That all sounds very heady and probably boring.  How does that relate to our real-world issues like the ones I brought up at the beginning of this article?  My premise is that we all need to be successful at both self-creation and at connection.  Let's take a simple example I have experience with, artists.  An artist may spend their entire lives perfecting their craft, their self-expression through their medium.  They might become absolutely amazing artists, and yet no one may ever even know they exist.  As much as you long to express your inner being through your art, you also long to have that expression received by others.  The artist Van Gough is a perfect example of this.  He became an amazing artist, but he was a total failure at connecting with other people.  As a consequence, he only sold one piece of his art.  Creating art and selling art are as different as night and day.  Creating art is all about the deep dive into your individual and unique view of life while selling art is all about connecting with people different from you and building bridges to that difference.

Using this example as a bridge to the beginning of the article, the creative process of making money is a vastly different mindset than being able to receive the ease feeling that you are looking for by belonging with significance to the tribe you have felt separate from.  As I said before, lots of money is not about getting your survival needs or even comfort needs met.  Lots of money is about wanting to be accepted and valued in a larger circle of humans.  The skills that allow you to create wealth do not give you a clue as to how to connect and receive that belonging and value to a larger society the wealthy person is craving.  Because of our modern view of dualism, we will see the conflicts inherent in trying to mix our individuality with the confusing differences that arise when trying to connect with others, so we identify with just one half of the equation and deny our need for the other half.  For this reason, we can never be satisfied no matter how good we become at our half of the game.

The exact same scenario plays out with those people that try to identify with the connection side of the dualistic coin.  They may become great caretakers, saints, politicians, social workers, bartenders, husbands, and wives.  But the skills of connection involve sharing sameness with others.  That is what makes people feel like they belong.  If you are the same as us, feel as we feel, do as we do, then you belong with us.  You are a loved member of the tribe.  The problem is that this environment suppresses originality and creativity.  You don't dare express your difference; your uniqueness.  To do so you run the risk of being cast out as a non-believer; a traitor to the values and beliefs of your tribe or family.  The connection side of this coin is just as restrictive as the creative side.

But the reality is we need both sides to be happy, fulfilled, and complete.  We need both creation and connection.  We have to create a life where we are able to express our uniqueness in the world in such a way that it generates the opportunity for the connection we need.  Then we have to learn the skills to do this on a regular basis.  This is not an easy task.  Identifying with one side or the other and seeing life as a right versus wrong contest (my way versus their way) fails.  It does not work – give it up.  Both sides need the other to achieve completion; wholeness.  This is the concept of Holistic health – the interactions of the many diverse parts work together synergistically to form something much greater than just the sum of the parts.  To do this requires the Taoist perspective of the Yin/Yang interaction of seeming opposites.  The goal of life is to become whole, not the best at one side or the other.  

This process of building a whole self is kind of like loading a boat with cargo; sort of a soul “boat” floating on the river of life.  Imagine every new skill you learn has great weight in your soul boat.  On the left side of the boat, you put your skills at creating, and on the right side you put your skills of connecting.  As you can see, if you load up on just one side of your boat, your boat capsizes.  That is why so many of us have lives that feel like we have been dumped into the river to drown.  We capsize ourselves by only focusing on developing one side of our personality skill sets.  To keep from getting dunked, we have to load the boat of experience evenly, alternating one side then the other.  In that way, we stay balanced and dry.  Balance is the true goal of life.  Balance is the success that gives us the feeling we are all looking for.  Success in just one side or the other feels exciting at the moment, but it can not fill us the way we are looking to be filled.  We need both creation and connection.

Take care,

David    

Ellen update:    

I hardly see Ellen anymore.  She is in an artistic frenzy.  She has got the flow going and she is loving it!  It may be Christmas season for the rest of us but for her it is all about following the moment and letting the picture tell her what it wants to look like.  It is like they speak to her and give her direction as to what shapes and colors and pattern and movement they want to express.  She never knows what the next minute will bring.  There is no complete design she is trying to reach because she is on a journey of discovery with each step being new and unexpected.