Investing In Delusions?

I’m sitting by the poolside watching my son and daughter play in the pool with their cousins.  We are vacationing for a few days on the spectacular island of Naxos in Greece and today will be a pool day.  In between reading, conversations with my husband and taking in the poolside fraternizing, I just happened to tune in our kids’ conversations.  Each of them was showing off to each other, their style of “strutting” their way into the pool.  First our son, with goggles, shoulders back, knees slightly bent, he walked “hip hop style” to make his entry into the pool. Next my nephew. “Watch me guys, this is my style” he says as he does his own version of swaggering his way into the water. Totally into it, they use their bodies, their faces and expressions to convey their unique essence out to the world.  As I watch each one, I am amazed at their sense of confidence in themselves, their absolute certainty of who they are and their “style”.

Since we all start off in a similar way exploring, finding and fine tuning the perfection that is already our birth right, why is it that most often we end up losing what cannot be lost? Why do we get caught up in illusions and delusions about who we are, who we “should be” who others expect us to be?

I think we get too invested. We are billionaires sitting on assets that keep giving us a regular supply of dividends. We need these dividends. They are the right currency because most of the world recognizes their value.  The world around us is full of stories about what’s real, what’s desirable, what’s beautiful, what’s normal and necessary.  From these stories we become master story tellers, creating our own masterpieces, forgetting that they were stories to begin with. There are organizations and institutions that depend on our buying into these creations. It keeps people in power, it sells more things, and it creates wants we think we need. It creates scarcity and lack and ultimately we are lacking. We are not enough.

But, we can sure strive to be enough. We can strive to fill the gaps of our perceived inadequacies. There’s a whole world full of merchants and merchandise with suggestions that are not so subtle. And so, we buy into the delusions not seeing that they are just illusions.  The stories become our realities and get inextricably woven into the programming of our inner landscape.  The messages get hard coded and for the most part were designed to be only compatible with codes that would sustain the other.

A complete overhaul of the system would be almost impossible.  Unless, one was willing to let go of everything!  That would mean giving up the wealth, the rewards and the regular deposit of returns that we have become used to for so long.  That would mean leaving the mansion and moving into the poor house or perhaps the streets not knowing if we will have shelter for the night.  It means closing all the bank accounts and giving up the supply of soul numbing, worldly “bling”.  It would mean an entirely new way of seeing which has nothing to do with the eyes. Seeing ourselves, the games we play, seeing others we attract into our lives, and the games they play…usually a reflection of our own…these are not skills that are taught in school.  Most of us won’t do this. We like our stories even while we don’t like ourselves. Our stories of who we think we are serve us well.  If we believe we are victims then we can get sympathy and attention from others.  If we are weak, then we can gain power by controlling any and all aspects of our life or…even by controlling others.  The system serves us well. It’s flaws help us conceal ours.  The arrows are always pointing outwards and are the signposts for us to create more stories and more illusions. So eventually we only look to the outside, the outer world to meet all of our wants and needs.  When really the real treasures, the real wealth and everything we need to have a meaningful life in the outside world and our inner world was already given to us at birth, before the word’s asset managers made themselves known to us.

Maybe it’s time to get acquainted with our portfolio?