Sick and tired of feeling discontented? Sick of fighting the good fight?

Don’t worry; our natural state is discontent.

All the time, money, and effort we spend on either avoiding it or working it out is a waste.

A waste of time. Our precious time. Friends, we are born to die, and life goes quickly.

As we grind our heels into the wet sand of the shore line, life will run out with the tide.

We must accept that we all wake up with it every day.

The discontent that is …

Hang on?

That goes against every premise and belief you and I have been taught.

Well, here’s the grabber—we have a choice.

Another choice!

Before I go on, though, think about this example.

I live in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It is one of the most beautiful, affluent, and wealthiest ten-square kilometres on this planet.

The beaches are beautiful, and the people are beautiful.

The dogs are beautiful.

And the butts and boobs!

Oh, the butts and the boobs!

They shine, they preen, they pluck, and they bounce.

Magnificent!

European cars, private schools, and fusion sushi bars are as common as power suits in a bank’s boardroom, yet the smiles are often manufactured, and the passive aggression and discontent vibrates through the air like a broken microphone.

The gleaming BMWs and the sparkling castles of wealth cannot hide the sinking reality that many of its residents quietly suffer.

And the source of all that suffering?

That all their efforts of acquisition and ownership have not made them happy.

The sadness lurks under the façade of success.

Success is a manufactured myth.

And the human discontent is merely amplified by the excess.

And the champagne and cocaine runs through the gutters of Bondi Beach as testimony to the failure of acquisition.

Ownership is possibly not a victory but a sentence.

Ownership of money.

Ownership of property.

Ownership of assets.

Even the ownership of relationships and marriage.

What? Even marriage?

Yes, the traditional Western view of marriage.

Still, the beauty shines through the cracks in the machine.

Look past the shells of excess to the beach at dawn, on the water’s edge, and you will find happiness and peace in a lover’s kiss, a father’s hand, or a mother’s caress.

Free and bliss in the human connection.

No charge.

And the discontent dissolves in another person’s touch.

That’s the winning ticket, my friends.

That the solution is in the day with another human being.

Communion of the spirit.

The vulnerable and loving connection of the couple or the group.

And that’s the choice, my friends.

Do we listen to the default in the dark of the dawn?

“I hate my life.”

Or do we challenge the faulty memory imprint of past failure and loss and decide, just for today, to choose life?