The Transitional Evolution of Happiness.
I fell in love again this weekend. My sweetheart was with me when it happened, so I think it was ok. 🙂We were driving through pine trees bathed in sunlight with a backdrop of clouds, seeing the eternal grandeur of rivers, rocks, and the incredible complexity of nature that thrills and astounds in the same breath.
For a few hours this weekend there was peace, and a harmonious sense of wonder and gratitude.
Have you ever fallen in love with life all over again?
And it occurred to me that there was a time in my life where I would have missed every moment of the beauty before me. The younger me would have been bored by the car ride, because he would have been waiting to get somewhere, to do something, or buy something.
He would have been focused on the next, the new, the never-ending desire for better, greater, faster. In short, he would have always been looking for something else…
Without realizing that it was all right there in front of him.
I spent time this weekend, in our home away from home in the mountains, thinking about the purpose of life. There are so many people who claim to have a recipe for your happiness, by doing this, or following that.
And while I appreciate their good intentions, I’m coming to feel that it’s just a little childlike to believe that what makes me happy might work for someone else.
Because what I want changes through the seasons of my soul.
I once heard it said that the purpose of life was to find your purpose, and while I agree with the concept, I think that it might also be that the purpose of life is to find happiness in spite of a purpose.
Because while serving a purpose can give us a strong sense of identity and even destiny, I think there is something incredibly life affirming to accept that you can be happy, truly peaceful and happy, in a way that does not need a grand purpose or destiny to support it.
Life in itself might be the happiness of existence.
And that happiness will change as I endure and experience. Maybe future me will read these words years from now, and remember the feeling of happiness and find it yet from a different source.
Maybe it will be in the knowledge of who I have served, maybe it will be sitting on my back porch watching the sun set over the lake, or feeling the thrill as I climb my plane through the heavens, watching the world fly by beneath me.
Who knows. I certainly don’t.
Maybe it will be the simple joy of writing another piece of this work, and hopefully helping you to find your own happiness in whatever way works for you.
A younger me would never have thought that this could bring me happiness, and yet here I sit, night after night, writing, erasing, rewriting, and finding a picture to match the words that have come forth of their own accord.
Happiness, it seems, can be found in things that we never would have expected, if only we give ourselves the freedom to follow our hearts into whatever they desire.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings