The Ultimate Delusion: Stability

The Three Poisons are greed, anger, and delusion. (Translations may vary.) The delusion I keep running across is the belief in stability. I see people everywhere saying that something is “the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever.” Politicians act like it is still 1955. Of course they make bad decisions: When their brain hasn’t been updated in 59 years, how relevant can their choices be?

Things have been tough lately. My husband’s sponsor and therapist have died. My car had $1,700 in repairs last week and still needs another $450 worth. Even the TV is having issues. I could panic and say the world is coming to an end (or perhaps just mine).

You start out with delusion, a mistaken opinion. Then you get greedy. “If I had this thing 10 years ago, perhaps I could have this related thing today.” When life does not cooperate and the denial bubble bursts, then comes the anger. (The stages of the grief process are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Screw with someone’s denial and watch the anger spew.) It is all so logical. “If A was true 10 years ago, A is still true today.” The problem is that A went away and never looked back. You may never see A again. The stability was always a fantasy, completely delusional. Perhaps it was a necessary illusion; perhaps not.

What the past few weeks have shown me are the advantages of being minimalist. I have been deliberately going fewer places and spending less money. This has made it much less difficult financially to deal with the current crises. Greed is anti-minimalism. Life has not been fun lately, but I refuse to make it unnecessarily complicated. I started being more minimalist a year or two ago. It is now paying financial and serenity dividends.