How to be happy when you have no idea what is going on...

• 26 Apr 2017

I keep looking for the answer.

I keep wondering if the next person, job, and opportunity that crosses my path is gonna be the Thing.

The Thing that quiets my anxious mind once and for all: the Prince (or Princess) Charming, the Big Break, the thing that makes me happy and content and also a famous millionaire forever.

I keep waiting for it to arrive so that I can stop searching for it; discontented with my lack of content, mistaking the whole problem for the solution.

Someone said to me the other day that those of us who have lofty dreams, big goals and the drive to accomplish them are setting ourselves up to never be satisfied — and therefore less happy.

And those of us who are content with the 9–5 and the one partner and the way things have always been are setting ourselves up to be happier — and never do much of anything.

But I’m beginning to think there’s a third way.

What if I didn’t view my desires as a deficit, and instead chose to enjoy them?

What if the whole point of the game is that every time you reach the top of one mountain, you don’t win anything besides a better view of all the bigger rocks left to climb?

What if the fact that there is no everlasting moment of glory isn’t some cruel trick played on us by the universe, but rather the gift of infinite potential?

What if the purpose of life isn’t to figure it out and arrive safely but rather to evolve through a limitless process of discovery?

What if it’s the tension between where you are now and where you want to be that creates pleasure?

Imagine if, instead of fighting with the space between us + the thing we want, we allowed ourselves to enjoy the feeling of wanting it?

Rather than trying to extinguish desires by meeting them as quickly as possible, we could revel in them as they ebb & flow inside our bodies, moment by moment.

What if desire itself is the whole trick to enjoying the process?

We could get all existentially depressed over the fact that there is no end; no Thing that will fill this place inside us that longs for more. Or we could celebrate everything as a new beginning. An open door where there was once a wall. A new set of questions. An invitation.

What we get at the top of the mountain won’t be the satisfaction we hoped for — not for long, anyway. But what we do get is THE VIEW.

And the view of where we want to go, from where we stand now, is what makes life interesting.