Joe Walsh May Be to Blame

I am sure at some point you have heard the Joe Walsh classic “Life’s Been Good,” a favorite of classic rock stations and the all-American backyard barbecue. If you’re not familiar with it, the theme of the song is life has been good to me so far.

I will be honest, I like the song. My wife, Jolie, and I saw him perform live last summer at an Eagles concert. It’s an upbeat song with a lively tune and engaging lyrics, and as music goes it’s a good one. However, I despise the question born of the mindset that life has been good to me. You know the question. We’ve all heard it: “How has life been treating you?”

Does it ever strike a discord with you when asked? The fallacy of the question lies in its omission of the fact that we have the ability to construct our own model of the world, not be passive observers waiting for life to treat us in any certain way. That is the beauty of life, to choose our beliefs, paradigms, and hallucinations. Unfortunately, most people today are unaware of this basic human freedom and are still sleepwalking. They assume that life is just happening to all of us and that we have no control of our external reality.

We can look at life in two ways. One, life is simply happening and we have no control over our reality. Or two, we are manifesting and creating our own world in every choice that we make. Which one do you find empowering? Which one leads you to the life that you envision for yourself?

Whenever I am asked the question, How has life been treating you? my automatic answer is I have been treating life pretty well. Feel free to adopt it. Together, we can begin to wake people up to their reality.