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Today's
Meditation:
It's
pretty telling that Eleanor's response here had nothing to
do with money or social status or possessions. Two
of her most important requirements are feelings, and the
other is the ability to love others. Does that mean
that we can be happy without any of the other stuff in
life? In theory, yes--it does mean that. There
have been plenty of human beings who have rejected the
allure of possessions and lived without any at all, and
they've found a great deal of happiness.
Others,
of course, have done the same thing and have been
miserable. My guess would be that they became
miserable partly because they started to focus on the
things they didn't have--the very things that they
rejected--as opposed to the things they did have. I
would also guess that the unhappy ones, much as unhappy
people everywhere, haven't been honest with themselves,
haven't given their all to their work, and haven't made an
effort to improve their own ability to love others.
It's
not hard to be happy. We tend to convince ourselves
that it is, though, because we want to think that
happiness can come without effort, and that we don't have
to work at being happy. Nothing could be further
from the truth, though--happiness does take effort, and it
does take dedication. We can't give just a few
minutes of effort each day and expect happiness to drop
out of the trees onto our heads. We have to continue
to put our best efforts into our search for happiness, and
that search can lead only inside, where our true selves
live, often hidden from the outer world in our efforts to
protect it from the dangers of the world.
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