A Calm Life Can Be a Happy Life
Some people know from childhood what they are going to be as adults, what they are going to be “when they grow up.” For others, it is a bit more difficult to decide what path to take, but most, if not all, of us go through the same thing: what am I going to do with my life? Being happy is then shaped by obtaining a goal. Few will tell you that when they grow up, they want to have a calm life. In fact, what kind of goal is that?
Our culture seems to be intensely focused on passion and dreams. For example, if you took a look at the most popular shows on TV, you will realize that they are the ones where people compete for the chance to live out their dreams.
It seems that the idea that success, being number one, managing to be better than anyone else, achieving what nobody has achieved before, realizing a dream is what we must do. Nobody tells us the price that often must be paid for this, much less that we can have other goals. Having a calm life is also an option.
The ego’s constant desire to be special
Having a gift and a talent is not always a blessing; it does not necessarily make you happy. In today’s society, it seems that if you do something well, you have to exploit it, make it available to those who want to use it, and make a living with it. We are sold the idea that this talent makes us special and that we need to show the world.
The same thing happens to people with great intellectual capacities. In some way or another, the more intelligent a person is, the more he is pushed to “get a good job” or study something more complicated. It may seem like a lie, but their options are reduced because they cannot “waste” so much talent for studying. You cannot waste so much talent being happy.
Maybe the path goes along the lines of teaching our youth that the answer to the question what do you want to be has no reason to be the same as for the question what do you want to work as.
Not achieving everything you desire can be a blessing
It is easy to dream of a happy, wonderful life, full of personal and professional recognition, great luxuries that you can afford thanks to your amazing job, and a plethora of opportunities to have a dream life, one of those that we see on TV. The truth is we often believe that it has to be that way.
But we are often so obsessed with getting what we want or what is expected of us that we forget many things that are along the way. In this search for success, we weigh ourselves down with stress, our personal relationships will be affected by the achievement of those objectives, and it is easy to neglect our emotional and even our spiritual side.
Surely you can think of many examples of people who are at the top, who have managed to achieve great levels of triumph, who are experts in their field, but who live at the limit of the physical strength and their sanity, not to speak of their health. People who are under great pressure and who, for some reason or another, have no other option but to continue this way, despite everything, people who have no chance of changing.
But surely you also know of people who, for whatever reason, stopped chasing their dreams to change their lifestyle and who gained from this change or who simply had to stop what they were doing. Those are the ones this quote refers to.
“ Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck. ”
-Dalai Lama-
The key here is to be flexible, to roll with the punches and make the best of failure to grow within, to look inside yourself and not just beyond. What do you want from life: to be or to have? Accepting the cards that you are dealt in life can allow you to play a great game.
The very purpose of life is to seek happiness
“I believe the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in that religion or this religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness… ”
-Dalai Lama-
Is being happy really a viable goal in our surroundings? Deep down, we all know that it is difficult, at least under the conditions imposed upon us by today’s society and with the general tendency that we have to complicate life. Simplifying some things can imply a great chance to seek that happiness we desire.
Each of us must seek the way in which we want to follow that path, without feeling guilty for taking one path or another, and respecting the one that others decide to take.
