Personally, I look forward. I think always of the future and I like to plan my future joy, but expect it to come spontaneously when it finally arrives. Much of my happiness is based on my expectation of the future. So, although I can remind myself of plenty of happy times and do not carry around with me a bundle of worries built high by past events, I suspect that I will never be satisfied. It seems that it's not what I've had, but what I might experience in the future that keeps me smiling (or scares me).
Perhaps when I am very old and believe myself to have reached the final stage of the race, a point at which there is no further piece of the puzzle to fit together, maybe then I will turn my mind backwards and all the happy days that I've enjoyed to date will start to stand to me.
For now, I simply try to remember to be grateful and to recognise that I've had an easy ride, which is rare in this fragmented age.
I have been lucky enough to discover some of the things that do make me happy. If you never experience joy, how do you know what fills you with that bubbly, smiling feeling?
Now, if only I could create some co-herant plan to ensure future happiness, I wouldn't have to worry about what's coming and could enjoy the days that's here right now. How fickle we are, even the people who acknowledge that they've been lucky (me), fear that their luck will run out.
Until recently, I felt just like this. This feeling that the future would carry me away in a smiling-inducing bundle of joy. Always looking forward to what would improve things. And though I focused on the past more than you, I was either living there or in the future... never in the present. That was until I discovered The Power Of Now by Eckharte Tolle. I actually bought the book about seven years ago, and threw it aside after reading about five pages. Then recently, a very calm friend loaned me the CDs of the book. I've never experienced a book through audio before, but it really hit home this time. The point is that we can only live in the now... even in the future we will be experiencing it in the now... as we did in the past. So the only thing that can be enjoyed is the now. It's quite liberating... for no longer does the future have to be the biggest highlight... now is
ReplyDelete- Elaine