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I am past my expiration date.
I am not alone. If I wanted to be cruel, most people living on this planet are.
The moment you stop contributing to the planet, your expiration date is in the past. And if we look closely, that means 50% of all living humans…
Younger people may not have come to age where they can contribute, etc.
And even though from Life’s point of view, this is the hard fact, that unless you are contributing, you are just taking… Using up what you didn’t contribute to creating.
And yet, humanity as a whole, and especially marketeers, are hellbent to extend human lifespan… so we can finally gobble up this little blue planet, and be done with it.
I was never concerned with aging until one day I realized that I was dying and I haven’t done fully what I set out to do in my life. I was, maybe, halfway through, and I needed a little more time.
And suddenly, as I was making my deal with myself, and Consciousness, to live so I can do what I came here to do, I am starting to see all these videos and ads for life extension.
Extend it for what?
When I look, I see a lot of old people in the Community Centers I go to my exercise classes for. Most way past their expiration date.
What do I mean by expiration date? Things have an expiration date, the date until they are useful. Useful for others, not for the thing.
Usefulness is in the eye of the recipient, not the giver… just like value: value is in the eye of the recipient.
Who are you useful for? Other than for yourself?
I even see younger people who are not very useful for anyone either…
Why am I harping on this usefulness?
Because you are all looking for happiness at the wrong places.
“That’s why you buy shit you don’t need, go to bed with people you don’t love, and try to work hard to get approval of people you don’t like.”
And maybe that is why you are on my site. To get yet another way to become happy.
But what if happiness is not the goal of life, what if happiness is a side-effect of something else? Of what, Sophie, what?
Of being useful, silly.
I have been watching people, watching myself, and I feel that when they feel useful, they have an internal state I would call happiness.
Even the stingy ones… or may especially the stingy ones? lol
Take my Sunday calls. Both dudes are useful: I get to get my work done, not FOR them, for everyone.
It is hard to be silently brilliant, and my work, without a doubt, requires brilliance, so I talk to people… Lots of thoughts occur when you open your mouth.
And if you are one of the privileged people who listens in to my private conversations with these guys, they are happy. They can’t wait for Sunday to come, so they can make a difference by just being there for me.
Delightful. And I am happy too: I was useful for them: I gave them an opportunity to be useful.
Happiness all around.
The listener may not get all that happy: you see, they don’t have to be useful to listen, they may be dutiful, or they may hope that the audio will make them happy, and they will end up not being happy. They may end up feeling used. By me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson says:
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
But yesterday’s usefulness is today’s sadness, despair, pretense.
When I made my deal with Life, back in August, I re-negotiated my expiration date. I asked for enough time to do my life’s work: taking a group of people to The Promised Land.
All the way to Human Being.
And sometimes I struggle to be useful. Yesterday was a day like that. I felt out of sorts, the combined Big Bundle and the HOE whacked me out of shape.
And yet… it seems, I managed to be useful for a few people.
One of the subscribers to my Sunday rant wrote to me:
“The call was good Sophie… at least for me… And in the gossiping there is always things to learn… for example, “In order to change, you first have to admit to your wily ways or “Thinking the sun doesn’t shine in Syracuse is a way to justify being miserable and dreaming about going to places where the sun still shines… You don’t want to be responsible doing the best you can… Are all those 20% in Syracuse Sexual Energy Soul Correction… like me? LOL…
Einstein sitting in the bath tub and you playing Freecell when thinking is a way to keep your attention on the thinking, so it’s not scattered and not influenced by all kinds of things that can steel your attention… It just came to me that Steve Jobs did the same… he took walks when he was thinking… and when he wanted to get his thinking out he brought someone with him, to not be silently brilliant… I see also that you all three do something physical while you are thinking… Einstein blowing bubbles, you moving your hands with the mouse and Steve Jobs moving his legs… Can it be to not let the mind scatter your thinking with bullshit stuff?… I am going to implement this..”
Some people are useful because they tell you that what you are doing is useful. It takes generosity of spirit… Acknowledgment is incredibly useful and makes the giver and the recipient feel useful, and happy.
Want to try out my Sunday Rant calls? And maybe, if they are useful to you, send me an email, so I can get some energy from having been useful to you? I guarantee it will make you happy.
Get your Sunday Rants with SophieThe more attention you have on yourself, (your about-me score) the less value you’ll see. And the less chance you have for happiness.
The two guys I talk to on Sunday have an about-me score of 10%. The guy who wrote that the call was useful, has an about-me score of 30%. 30% is where value becomes visible to you. 10% where you can become useful yourself.
Doing something, even doing your job, is not necessarily useful. Useful is a sacred beingness+doing. Without the beingness you cannot be useful. 90% of humanity is NEVER useful… therefore is never happy.
Are you one of the 90%? Then your main goal should become to reduce your about-me score… so you can see value, and become useful yourself.
PPS: I know people who are do-gooders… and yet not useful. Why? Because they have an agenda. You cannot be useful and have a secret, hidden agenda… The beingness will be greed, instead of usefulness.
PPPS: My first teacher was Werner Erhard. He had a housekeeper. His housekeeper was not happy. Werner was a slob (Virgo like me) and never put the cap back on the toothpaste… and the toothpaste was all over the vanity…
So he was unhappy.
One day Werner noticed, so he decided to change his attitude, the housekeeper’s attitude.
He asked: “what do you do for a living?”
The housekeeper answered testily: “I clean for you, and I put the darn cap back on the toothpaste.”
“And what are you building with that?” Asked Werner.
The housekeeper looked, and then said: “I make your house clean for you.”
“And what are you building with that?” Asked Werner.
The housekeeper looked again, a little longer, and said: “I help you so that you don’t have to pay attention to any of the things i do for you.”
“And what are you building with that?” Asked Werner.
The housekeeper thought for a long time, and then said: “I guess I am helping you build a world that works for everyone, with no one left out…” and then he wept.
