The man in the picture looked like he was on top of the world, while in reality he was wallowing in the depths of hell.
If you are suffering, nothing in the outside world can override the story you are telling to yourself. And suffering, the insidious bastard that it is, does not stop after a change in physical circumstance - it plays on a loop, inside of you.
To stop the suffering, we need to understand that there is no life apart from the inner life. It creates the circumstances of our outer life and it colors every single interaction we have in it.
Chester had power, charisma and an incredible influence on millions of people. He had an influence on me. And part of all of that was derived from the physical suffering he had endured as a child. It molded him into the person he became.
AND IT KILLED HIM.
He didn’t know how to shut off the loop that played and re-played in his mind - the loop of suffering and pain.
Millions of adoring fans, millions of dollars, an amazing career, six children...none of that could overpower the painful story in his mind. There, he was still that scared and traumatized little boy.
I am sure death was a relief for him. For us, it has to be a reminder, a wake up call - we need to charge courageously into the scary reaches of our minds and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH to our personal story of suffering.
Life was meant to be a joyous ride. If it isn’t, something is out of whack.
I am supposed to be happy. You are supposed to be happy. But, and it’s a BIG but, we gotta fight for it if we don’t have it. Not because happiness requires struggle, quite the contrary, but because we have actively been cultivating resistance to happiness.
That’s what suffering is - resistance to our birthright.
Happiness and freedom require a simple, albeit a difficult, act. We need to stop telling THAT STORY, you know the one, no matter how “justified” and “realistic” it is.
It’s time for HAPPY.
It’s time for FREE.
And your freedom, your happiness, might just inspire someone, help them see that changing their personal story of suffering into A HAPPY ONE ain’t impossible. In fact, it’s easier than we let ourselves believe.
Suffering can become an asset, once we let it go.
So let it go.
It’s time for HAPPY.
