Sometimes our lives are overloaded with notions of practicality and productivity. We believe that if there’s no planned purpose to an event or activity, there’s no point in doing it. In reality the best things in life are unplanned and without an appointed purpose.
We sacrifice a great deal of our time and sanity doing what we don’t want to do, so that at some arbitrary point in the future we can establish the freedom to do what we love.
We relentlessly pursue happiness in every imaginable way. We pursue happiness in material possessions, in social status, and in the acceptance and recognition we get from others. We even search for happiness in various versions of a future-promised afterlife. But these pursuits rarely give us more than fleeting moments of joy. We end up missing out on lots of thrilling life experiences and contentment because we fail to understand a very simple but easily overlooked fact…
The Search for Happiness Causes Misery
You can’t find something that’s already here with you. Happiness exists in this moment. It’s not something you need to find. That’s like trying to find the oxygen you’re breathing right now.
In reality, it’s the tension of your mind that causes unhappiness. If you’re not happy, it’s because your mind is focused on something that’s making you unhappy. And why is your mind doing this? Because you’re stuck in a vicious [Read more…]