Was it a happy Halloween?  

It was for me; I went out with my love; my wife.  We saw a movie; a biography of a talented French Singer Edith Piaff.  She lived the kind of life made classic by successful artists in the music industry; she rose like a rocket out of the darker dingier side of French life and, after a few short years on the center stages of the world, burned out and died at the age of fourty-eight.

People like Edith highlight some of the basic flaws in the way humanity around the world thinks.   Her life story illustrates the causes of much pain and suffering in her drive and her excesses. 

Edith Piaff was forced to sing for her living at a very young age and in it discovered her passion.  Like so many famous people she worked intensely at her craft, she put in long hours, day after day and along the way had a few ‘lucky’ breaks. 

My definition of luck is, -where inspiration meets opportunity.  It is the natural occurrence of a thought pattern adhered to with absolute conviction.  Edith had this to the degree that when opportunity came into her life she was ready; she seized it.  She was as clear about what she would not do as she was about what she would do.  She made her life.

Unfortunately she fell into the struggle and reward pattern that is so humanly common.  It is possibly the easiest negative and destructive pattern to get drawn into.  It follows a thought process something like this; “I worked hard this week, I put out a lot and I deserve a reward.”  On the surface that looks like a normal healthy pattern.  It is not!  That thought pattern is likely the leading single cause of disease in our society.  It is a wolf in sheep’s clothes; negativity wrapped in the shrouds of sensibility.

Many will tell us that as long as we use moderation the reward is acceptable, many will argue that after doing hard work, of course we deserve a reward.  That is like saying “after the war we will have earned our peace.” 

We don’t need war to justify peace, peace stands on its own merits.  If a thing truly is good it is not a reward but rather a natural unfolding of right action, it needs no justification.  If a thing is not good then no amount of justification will make it good.

How often do we reward ourselves with some form of poison for suffering through an ‘unpleasant’ situation?  Do you go out for a couple drinks at the end of the week?  Do reward yourself with that cigarette or cup of Java?  How many of us tell ourselves we’ve been good and deserve that cheesecake, donut or other sweet treat reward?  We likely all do it at some time or another.  That doesn’t make it right or healthy.

Just because all of society says wrong action and thinking is all right it remains wrong.  Of course when ‘they all’ do it we do find it very enticing.  In fact almost every day when I walk home from work I pick up a sweet for the walk. 

It’s not the sweet, the coffee, the drink or even the smoke that is the underlying problem.  It’s simply the pattern of thinking.  The suffering – reward syndrome the world has bought into.  That is the cycle we must break, that is the thinking which leads to addiction and many of the most common diseases of our world.  And it all starts with “I have to…”.   You fill in the blank.  What do you think you have to do?  What sorts of things do you tell someone they need to do?  Every time we think in this way we make work out of creativity, we turn our pleasures into pain and often justify some form of poison as a reward.