Why take things so seriously? A framework to implement:
“If I continue this action/behavior for the foreseeable future, how would my life look?”
So:
“If I continue to take everything so seriously and feel the emotional weight of that seriousness for the foreseeable future, how would my life look?”
One could posit that it would lead to a very studious life filled with achievement. Another could say that the emotional weight of taking every little thing seriously leads to overwhelm and a drag through life where each and every obstacle is just another obstacle. Simply put, the beauty of life is removed. Then another, if we were to do the opposite we would lead ourselves into carefree complacency and a rut.
So as the answer to most things: counterbalance the two. Check in with your emotions and the weight upon your shoulders, reminding yourself that it is you that puts that weight there, it is your decision, your allowance of xyz desires/thoughts/feelings that has put that there. If found that this weight is pulling you down, is contributing to the difficulty of the task set before you, then do well to put it down for the time being, it’ll be there when you get back. The ego seeks to attach the vessel to any and all aspects of this material world that it can, for in death the ego dies completely, the soul remains regardless.
The ego looks to tell you that you are separate from all this and must seek a standing of power within it, if that standing is having the better car or the better placement within a company. It pokes you to attach to weights, and then pokes you to go after some reality, in which now your actions are more difficult, and your feelings while doing so are far more negative. Laugh at the ego, genuinely laugh.
Laughter as flipping the switch, to remove the seriousness for the moment and to embrace a mind of play, that this obstacle is a gift, that this, the next, and the next are what makes life all about. If one were to take it all seriously, reject the play, and sit in sorrow, ‘barely surviving’ as they fight everything, then all that is left is a bit of progress and heart that feels less and less willing to continue. Flip. The. Switch.
Play with it, accept there are consequences, trust in the universe to deal with you as it will, trust in you to figure it out if anything does happen contrary to your ‘plans’. This is not a go ahead to drink yourself stupid and live life as if to only die. It is to remind you that these obstacles can be drawn all over with blue crayons before they are vanquished, that sometimes it takes playing with your food before devouring it. Play within this life, for that is what it is all about. There are always more obstacles, more ‘problems’, so instead of taking them all so seriously and up tight like, play with them. Laugh and play, for before you realize it, life has already started. Get going.
