Serenity and Contentment Comes from Being Comfortable with the Middle

Happiness doesn’t rely on more, bigger, better or different

In an era of goal-focused thinking, an age of endlessly comparing ourselves with everyone else, there’s a danger that we can be seduced to thinking that happiness lays with achieving bigger, better, faster and more.

Our aspirations are shaped by the messages and the influencers who claim to have what we want (or should want), whether that’s the more opulent life, more freedom, tastier looking food, a better physique or whatever else they can portray having (whether they have it or not).

Thought-leaders and gurus of personal development proclaim that if we aren’t setting, monitoring and revisiting our goals annually, monthly or even daily then we’re wasting our precious time and drifting further from achieving our dream life. If we’re not employing the strategies, tactics and hacks of the great and the good then we should resign ourselves to remaining stuck where we are. Stuck in the middle.

I’m here today to defend the middle.

I quite like the middle.

Life is a rollercoaster of ups and downs. When we’re experiencing a high, brought on by an exhilarating experience, a positive result from something we’ve done, an act or word of kindness from someone around us, it feels good. We feel the buzz and we revel in the joy, but it doesn’t last. Sooner or later we’ll drift back towards the middle, where we spend most of our time, just chugging along.

I suspect that this is human-nature’s way and driven through the evolution of our brain over millions of years to adapt to the constant ups and downs.

Likewise, when we experience a low, be that a disappointment, pain, trauma, failure or despondency, certainly it feels bad. Whether something we’ve done has backfired, we’ve been let down by someone else or environmental factors have merely conspired against us, we are left to deal with the physical or emotional pain. There may be a period of analysis and soul-searching as we replay events in our minds and search for ways we could have done things differently. Whether we find answers or not, over time we come back to the middle where things don’t…

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