Just be
The conditioning starts right from the cradle: you will be happy when(fill in the blank). That blank can be: get out of kindergarten, get to high school, grow a beard, lose your virginity, get a car, get into your dream college, get that dream job, marry your “sweetheart,” get that loft downtown, have two kids, etc. etc.
The list is endless, and there are very few people who are actually taught to be happy by just being. Some people are fortunate enough to realize that these external things, people or events, when achieved, don’t actually make us happy for more than an instant. For most people though, there is always something “more” just on the horizon that is really going to do it, to make us happy.
It’s a formula for chronic discontent, which is exactly what is cultivated in our society these days. This explains in part why people have reacted so dramatically to the changes in the overall economy: it’s fear that they won’t have those things that they think will make them happy. Few remember or care to focus on the fact that a few years ago, before the “economic crisis,” when all those things were readily available, chronic discontent was still the name of the game, because there was always something “more” to want, there was always someone with a shinier car or a bigger McMansion down the block. The famous performance artist Spalding Gray was coaxed by friends to move from a small vacation house he loved in Sag Harbor, NY to a huge modern “mansion” in Sagaponack. The argument was that someone as “successful” as him “deserved” and “should” live in a more splendid place. He listened to these friends, and plunged into a depression when he actually moved into that cold modern “masterpiece.”
If there is a lesson to be learned from the economic gyrations we have seen, it could be this: work hard to make your dreams come true(that is the only way to make them happen, after all). But don’t think that the achievement of any one goal is the key to your happiness; every one of us has the ingredients for happiness RIGHT NOW in our lives, and it is incumbent upon us to cherish the people and things in our lives that we have at this moment.. You can move halfway around the world to get away from your life issues, you could get rid of a “difficult” spouse, but it doesn’t always help; Change can indeed be good, but it is not always the panacea we think. There is a great Buddhist saying that goes something like this: wherever you go, there you are!
Enjoy the skin you are in!
