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Today's
quotation:
Happiness
in this world, when it comes, comes
incidentally.
Make it
the object of pursuit, and it
leads us
on a wild-goose
chase, and is never attained.
Follow some other object,
and very possibly we may find
that we have caught
happiness without dreaming of it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Today's
Meditation:
I've
definitely been one of the people who have chased after
happiness. It wasn't my fault that I did so, for I
never had anyone in my life who could teach me that there
are other ways to go about being happy, but I certainly
was not happy during all of the time that I was looking
for it.
The
problem was simple, and it has to do with yesterday's
meditation: I always expected certain things, or
certain people, or certain situations, to make me
happy. If this would just happen, I'd tell myself,
I'll be happy. And many times "this" would
happen, and guess what? I definitely would feel
better for a certain amount of time, but none of the
things that I expected would make me happy ever did--the
good feeling would fade as I started to realize that my
dependence on a thing or another person for happiness was
more damaging to me than it was helpful.
I
started to discover the meaning of happiness when I
started to discover--and practice--the art of
acceptance. When I started to accept life for what
it was and I started to accept whatever situation I was in
as the way things were, I started to see that my happiness
depended on my own attitude. When I started focusing
on getting the most out of my life the way it was
rather than trying to turn it into what I thought it
should be, I started to realize that I was, indeed,
becoming a much happier person.
If
we spend all of our energy trying to change our lives,
then we don't have any energy left to make the most out of
everything that we have. When we trust life and look
for the lessons within our current situations, we have the
opportunity to let happiness come into our lives and touch
us gently and lovingly, transforming our perspective so
that we can see the happiness inside of us and let it grow
on its own, without trying to make it grow. We can't
force a rose to grow--we can only nourish the plant to
create the conditions in which a rose can grow.
Happiness works much the same way.
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| Questions to
consider:
Do you ever find yourself trying to force happiness to
come into your life?
Does it help?
Is it easy to step back and let life take its course
without trying to control it? If not, why not? Can we ever really control life or
any aspects of it?
Who are the happiest people that you know? How do
they become happy? |
| For further
thought:
One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions
that
will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by
chance,
in a lucky hour, at the world’s end somewhere,
and holds fast to
the days, as to fortune or fame.
Willa Cather |
