Becoming not Being #2

What are the conditions that encourage Becoming? What are the conditions we have got used to that surround our goals and targets that relate to Being- to getting a steady state reward?

We aim at wealth- a target figure- and then find it's about 10% less than what would bring total happiness. This is a constant finding across income levels once you rise above the median income. We all crave 10% more- even the billionaires...and we actually try to justify it in rational terms. But the reality is: we know deep down that becoming is the source of contentment, not being, and an extra 10% is like an 'ungreedy' desire for change. Actually, with minimal mental effort, 10% less can bring about a similar INCREASE in happiness. As the playwrite Lloyd Evans so rightly observes 'When you move from poverty to wealth or from wealth to poverty (as long as you have no dependents) it can be fun. What isn't is the steady state of wealth or poverty.'

The goal is in the becoming, the transformation- because that is more in alignment with reality that some kind of imagined 'state of being'. We can be misaligned by over focusing on being. Or by a wrongly conceived attempt at becoming. Indeed one way of looking at certain crimes is that they are some vastly misjudged attempt at 'becoming'. 

What is the right form of becoming? One that involves learning. Instinctively we highly value education (even though what is offered is often a very poor version) because we know it is part and parcel of any serious attempt at becoming. 

When we are learning we are feeding back off experience, recalibrating all the time. We are moving ahead and like a cyclist once moving we don't have to worry about wobbling. The steady statist is like someone who cycles to a place and then complains when they fall off once the bike has stopped. Keep moving! You can enjoy the counrtyside much better when you aren't looking at the ground and wondering how to stay upright...

So a positive learning attitude is one condition of becoming. Another is letting go- after all, how much baggage do you need on your path to becoming something different?