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Today's
Quotation:
When we recognize that nothing has to
go right for us to be happy,
that people do not have to
behave for us to love them,
our walk home can be
surprisingly simple. We
have
enormous power not to manipulate the world,
but to be
happy and to know peace.
Hugh Prather
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Today's
Meditation:
It's
rather comforting to realize that we "have the
power" to be happy and to know peace. Knowing
this takes away the power of outside forces to
"make" us happy, or to cause us to be happy or
not. My life is in my hands, just as your life is in
yours, and once we accept the fact that life and other people
generally will not act in the ways we expect, we can stop
letting our unfulfilled expectations cause us to be unhappy,
or take away the peace we feel inside.
Does
this mean that I can be happy even in the face of tragedy or
difficult times? Of course it does-- I won't be walking
around with a smile on my face, most probably, as I deal
with the tragedy or difficulties, but a happy person isn't
always necessarily smiling. I can be happy on my
terms, in my own ways, and the peace in my heart will help
me to be so.
This
world does its own thing, and it is impersonal-- the world
doesn't do anything that is meant to make us
unhappy or miserable. If other people try to do so,
then the problem is theirs, and we make a big mistake if we
allow it to become ours. If we try to make the world
into our image of what we think it should be, then we're bound to be
disappointed.
If
we allow the world and other people to be just what they
are, not what we think they should be, then our own peace
will be stronger and our happiness will be more stable.
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