I am back after a break from writing my daily blog entries. No excuses, I just needed a break, but now that it has been a few days since my last post and it sure feels good to be writing again. To those of you have emailed me to let me know you missed the regular posts I thank you for your encouragement.
Today I was thinking about why many of us so often find ourselves chasing happiness as if it were a possession, something we can simply acquire piece by piece like a new wardrobe. Often, when we’re unhappy, we fall into the habit of thinking that, if only one or two specific things in our life would change, everything would be fine. We might focus on the fact that we need a new car, or a raise, or a change in our living situation. We dwell on this one thing and strategize, or complain, or daydream about what it would be like to have it. Meanwhile, underneath the surface, the real reason for our unhappiness can sit unrecognized and unaddressed. And yet, if we are able to locate and explore the underlying cause of our discontent, all the surface concerns have a way of working themselves out in the light of our realization.
On the other hand, maybe we really do need a new car or maybe moving to another city would improve our life situation. However, if you think about it, most of the time it can only help to take some time to explore what’s going on at a deeper level. Sometimes, when we take a moment and stop focusing on external concerns, we can get to the heart of our discontent. In doing so we might realize that all our lives we’ve been dissatisfied, grasping at one thing after another, only to be dissatisfied about something else once we get what we want. I remember as a child being told that I needed to slow down and learn to be satisfied with what I had instead of always chasing the next thing. Perhaps in slowing down you might notice a pattern of running away from a place, or a relationship, when things get too hard. You might then wonder why this keeps happening, and how you might work through the difficulty rather than just escaping it. The point is, slowing down and turning our attention within can save us a lot of wasted energy in the long run, because it is very often the case that there is no external change that will make us happy.
Once you’ve taken the time to slow and inquire within, you can begin to make changes that address deeper issues. Granted, this can be very hard at first, especially if you’ve grown used to grasping for outside sources in order to quell your discontent… but in the end, I believe you may solve some lifelong problems at a deeper level, and they probably will be much less likely to recur.
This is the your best post to date. It is simple yet profound and the meaning quite clear. Thank-you for writing such truth. Peace.