So my thought for today is the difference between the feeling of where you’re at in your life versus where you’re going in your life.
And I thought about the difference between these, how you feel like your life is like now, how satisfied you are with your circumstances, versus the feeling of where you feel you’re going, the direction you feel your life is going.
And it made me think that really, what really is most important is where you’re going.
The feeling of moving in a positive direction is the most important feeling.
It’s more important than the feeling of how good are my current circumstances.
Imagine that you are in a miserable condition.
Your description of where you’re at is just things are terrible.
But you feel that you’re moving in a good direction, you are making changes, they’re very slow, you’re still in a really bad place, but you feel like you’re on the way up.
You feel that sense that things are getting better.
And contrast that to feeling amazing, you’re on top of the world, wonderful circumstances in your life, but the feeling that everything is going to go downhill, things are starting to unravel and fall apart, and you see only a negative direction going forward.
Which of those conditions would you rather be in? And they both have their flaws.
Either you have to live in misery, or you anticipate a fall into misery.
But it seems to me like it’s better to be miserable on the way up than it is to be ecstatically content at the beginning of a long way down.
Because our state of mind, our state of feeling, is not a static thing.
Just being in a happy place is a very passing, momentary thing.
The happy place is an ongoing movement, a trend of happiness, a trend of increase.
It’s not something that we can just stay at.
So it’s the trend of movement that really delivers that feeling of happiness, joy, satisfaction.
Not where we are.
So I find this message is reassuring if- you don’t have to make it all the way.
You don’t have to fix everything in your life.
You don’t have to, you know, go down the list of all the problems and just fix, fix, fix, fix and create some great, perfect condition where everything’s all right.
You just need to take the very smallest first step that leads you to feel, oh, I am moving in a positive direction.
I am beginning to walk down a path that leads to good things.
Just that first step, and the knowledge that- the feeling that I’m moving in this direction along this path already is very satisfying, very reassuring.
And on the other side, if we do feel this elevated joy and sense that everything’s all right, that everything is ideal, it’s a reminder of how everything passes, and that we must- to continue with a positive satisfying feeling, we must continue to move in that positive direction.
And that path has no known end.
That path goes on as long as any of us can imagine, the path towards the good, the greater good, the supreme good, higher and higher, making- moving towards better and better things.
There is no end to that road.
And it’s walking that path- to me, I think that is really the essence of the happy life.
Not a place to be.
And once again, like many of my messages, it’s a simple message.
It’s been said before.
But it’s just something that- sometimes these simple messages hit me with their their reality.
It’s not a place.
Happiness is not a place.
It is a movement.