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Today's
Meditation:
What
am I enthusiastic about? Just about everything, to be
honest. There are so many things in life that are
wonderful and fun and beautiful that it's hard for me not to
be feeling a constant sense of gratitude and
enjoyment. I don't need a $40,000 car to make me
happy-- my car gets me where I'm going with good music
playing, and that's pretty much all I need. I don't
need a $100 shirt or pair of pants to feel good about
myself-- that's possible even without the expensive clothes,
and it's my choice. Our home is well furnished with
the least expensive nice pieces of furniture we could
find. We didn't buy the cheapest stuff out there, but
we really like what we have bought.
Wordsworth
said that "getting and spending, we lay waste our
powers," and I believe he also would have included the
idea of wanting in there. What do you want? Is
peace of mind and something to be enthusiastic about enough
for you, or are you also interested in the expensive,
luxurious trappings that keep you working harder and harder
just to keep your head above the water? Is your life
defined by the things that you enthusiastically contribute
to the world, or is it defined by the things that you try to
get?
We
all want to be happy in life, but it's very difficult
sometimes to reach a level of happiness that makes us feel
content with who we are and what we're doing.
Sometimes if we can just step back and look more carefully
at the things we're working hard to accomplish, we can get a
clearer idea of just where we're going and just how we're
spending our time.
Personally,
I want to spend my time on things that I really like doing,
and I hope to minimize the time I spend on obtaining
material things. Comfort and luxury are fine in their
place, but their place certainly isn't on the throne of our
lives. If we put them there, we're dooming ourselves
to working for them as slaves our whole lives long.
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