One of the strangest things about this adventure called life we humans are undertaking is that it’s a solo journey from birth to death. Yet we are constantly seduced to believe that it’s not a solo journey. Our consciousness, our ego and our mind all conspire to create this illusion, this fanciful idea that we are living in the outer world with our fellow humans. It’s a perfectly understandable illusion, especially since our eyeballs point outward at the external world, constantly reinforcing the idea that we are living out there.

But it only takes one moment of disciplined reasoning to remind ourselves that we actually live inside our heads for our entire lives. Our sensory organs intake stimuli, which gets processed by our minds to create a subjective interpretation of what is happening in the outer world. The result plays inside our minds very much like a movie plays on a screen.

This reality, this understanding that all human beings are really living inside their heads watching their own movies, can be a very sobering realization. Because essentially what it means in simplest terms is that no one is coming to save you. No one is coming to rescue you. No one is coming to heal you. No one is coming to make you feel okay.

And let’s be really clear about something. It’s not that no one cares about you. It’s not that there might be people who would want to come save you if they could. It’s literally that they can’t because they aren’t living in your world. No one can save anyone. No one can rescue anyone. No one can make someone else’s inner world feel okay.

Only you can do that for yourself. Because only you control your movie. And that’s why it’s so helpful to remember that you live inside your head and no one else is coming in there. No one else is responsible for what’s going on in there, just like you’re not responsible for what’s going on inside anyone else. It might seem depressing or sad at first thought. But really it’s an incredible gift because once you can truly accept at a deep, deep level the fact that no one is coming, then you can start doing the inner work that is actually your life’s purpose.

And that’s why this crazy ride called life is so miraculous. Because it sets us up to have this inevitable moment of reckoning, this extremely powerful realization, when we finally are able to see that we’re the only ones invited to our party. Absolutely no one else is coming.

It’s almost a little bit funny because, as children, we’re often convinced our parents are going to make everything okay for us and if our parents don’t quite do the job in the way we want them to, then later in life we move on to try to find a friend or lover who will do the job. And when our friends and lovers aren’t able to do the job, we switch to new ones or we recruit our neighbors or our teachers or our bosses or our coworkers. And when absolutely none of them are able to do the job, no matter how much we yearn for it, no matter how much we struggle, no matter how much we sacrifice, twist and contort ourselves, that’s when we have no choice but to finally recognize that the job is ours to do—and ours alone.

Hooray! That’s when we’re actually ready for self love.

It’s absolutely beautiful the way this funny setup called life puts us into these difficult situations and disappointing relationships. And it just keeps doing it and doing it and doing it until ultimately we get it — no one’s coming.  As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, so too is it certain that no one is coming.

And it’s the greatest thing ever that no one is coming. We should thank our lucky stars that no one is coming. Because there’s absolutely nothing more fulfilling and more growthful and more transformative than using our amazing gift of willfulness to reach down into ourselves and do the work of self love that we’ve been yearning for our entire lives. 

How fantastic it is that no one can come along to deprive ourselves of this incredible journey of self love. It’s simply not possible to be deprived of the ultimate human experience. Aren’t we lucky that this impossibility is baked in to us by design?

So let’s get to work. I can’t come to your party, but I can remind you that you’re the only one invited to yours. And it’s absolutely wonderful news!