Black and white

[Zues126]

Choosing to be happy. We hear it in DR. We hear it in church. We hear it in the cliches passed down through generations. But what does this really mean? How do we do this? I'm 18 months into this process and I'm starting to see.

See, we have such a natural tendency to think of happiness as something that hinges on our external world. Our spouse, our finances, our lifestyle, etc. We are told 'money doesn't make you happy' or 'happiness is about wanting what you get, not getting what you want', yet we constantly feel that happiness is just around the corner.

How can I be happy when WAS is...
I'll be happy once this is over...
Once I meet someone else who is more like...

I spoke with a friend yesterday. He wants to make a lot of money so he can be 'free of obligations'. He doesn't want to have to work. He believes that if he can do more of 'what he wants' he'll be happier, because he doesn't enjoy being in the rat race.

I asked him- Suppose a guy had 100 million dollars in the bank and wasn't happy with his life. But he was convinced that if he got it to 1 billion dollars everything would be ok. Do you realize how absurd that sounds? He agreed, because while it's more money, he already has more than he needs and the extra zero doesn't really change anything if he can't be happy with what he has.

BINGO.

YOU are no different. Do you realize that out of all humans that have ever walked this planet, we are in the top .1% of all of them? Everyone on this forum has internet access and leisure time to post. Would you trade this for the life of a Egyptian Pharaoh?

So why, if we have it SO GOOD, can we not be happy?

The problem is that there are two ways to try to be happier: Change yourself, or change the world around you. So often we forget or never learn that changing ourselves is even an option. And in this day and age we have more ability to change our environment than ever before. So we keep trying to change the world around us to feel better.

Then BD hits. Full Stop. Boom.

We can't change this.

Oh my gosh. What do we do? We can kick and scream. We can try to control. We can do anything we want. But while we have internet, hybrid automobiles, and I-Phones, there is no application to force your WAS to recommit to you and your happiness for the rest of their life. And if there was, there is no app to protect you from losing them to a bus crash tomorrow.

So not fair. Doesn't the land of opportunity mean that if you want it bad enough you can get everything you want?

For me this has been a blessing. As an individual that has been given many gifts, I, more than most people I know, have been able to influence the world around me. Succeeding with my endeavors, with my finances, with my friendships. BD has been a wake-up call that told me that I have been so good at changing my world, I have neglected changing myself.

Look at third world countries. People travel to these countries and find natives that work hard, have little or nothing...yet they are filled with joyous spirits. This type of travel has been known to ground people. I always thought it was because it was a reminder of how good we have it. "If they can be happy with so little, I can surely be happy because I have so much more." But that's still backwards. We shouldn't be able to be happy because we have more than them, we should be able to be happy because like them we can make the choice to appreciate what we have.

Happiness is a SKILL. And at the center of it is appreciation. Choosing to spend time every day being appreciative of what we have, and focusing the flashlight of our thoughts on the feeling the goodness and love that is all around us.

I know a lot of you are going through tremendous pain right now. I'm not minimizing that. Nor am I suggesting that we shouldn't use our God given gifts to make a difference in the world for others and for ourselves. But BD was invaluable to me, because once I was faced with a loss that was out of my power to change, I was forced to learn to be happy by changing myself, instead of endlessly charging around the world racking up plastic trophies and shopping carts full of emptiness.