“I live this way a lot, squinting around the bend, anticipating what I’m about to get. Don’t we keep expecting to get something? In particular, to get it? To figure it out? To reach a culminating resolution, reward, complete understanding, wisdom, clarity, closure, the right answer, the holy grail? That very expectation fills us up and weighs us down.”
~Karen Maezen Miller
It’s as if the entire world has proclaimed us all as insufficient as soon as the ball drops at midnight.
None of these are unimportant intrinsically.
But it is the way we go about getting them which concerns me.
It's like there’s a projection on the wall in front of us we must catch to feel good again after all the failings and insufficiencies we may have experienced in the past year.
We think we will have it all figured out once we get there, like life will begin once we're there, that maybe we will be a better person than before.
Let’s resolve to not start our “new” life from a place of lack.
What you'll see is that your mind is always telling you that you have to change something outside in order to solve your inner problems. But if you are wise, you won't play this game. You'll realize that the advice your mind is giving you is psychologically damaged advice. Of all the advice in the world that you do not want to listen to, it is the advice of a disturbed mind. Your mind actually misleads you. Suppose it tells you, "If I could just get that promotion, then I'd be fine. I'd feel good about myself, and I could get my life together." Have you ever found that to be true? After you get your promotion, does that end all your insecurities and leave you financially satisfied for the rest of your life? Of course not. All that happens is the next problem comes to the surface. Once you see this, you realize the mind has a serious underlying problem. And what it's doing is making up external situations that might make things more comfortable. But the external situations are not the cause of the inner problem....The fact is, however, external changes are not going to solve your problem because they don't address the root of the problem. The root of your problem is that you don't feel whole and complete within yourself. ~Michael A. SingerMaybe there is something supremely substantial in something so uncomplicated.
Maybe I need to just stop pushing myself around the next bend and just keep my head in the present.
I want to replace those yearnings for more with appreciation for less.
I don’t want to set more goals for the future, I want to be at peace today.
I want to grow in satisfaction. If I keep tasting it, if I remind myself of what I already have, that will be enough incentive to keep seeking it instead of lack.
These things are always there. These are the things I should no longer overlook because I am too busy looking beyond.
I want to choose contentment and simply feel the peace I know I deserve (like every single one of us deserves).
I lose more ground with all this mental fumbling around. Not only do I set myself back, it seems like I the finish line is pushed further away. The divide between what is true and what I'd like to be true is widened.
This gap will no longer engulf me.
What we pay attention to thrives.
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass...
There is that in me — I do not know what it is
— but I know it is in me.
Wrench'd and sweaty — calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep — I sleep long.
I do not know it — it is without name — it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines!
I plead for my brothers and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death — it is form, union, plan
— it is eternal
life — it is Happiness.
~Walt Whitman
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