Now look at your nightmares
And all of your worst fears
Your car and your house
And your girl
And it stops thereAll these things
You can’t imagine losing
Like oh no
What if that happened to me
From Soja’s Everything Changes
At any moment you can choose to be happy.
And you can be happy because you are happy. You can care about something not because of other reasons. You can care about something because you care.
The ‘I’ll be happy when I _________’ is like being a mouse on a never ending mouse wheel (wait. So is that where ‘rat race’ comes from?). Or a dog chasing its own tail. Or Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner.
But it doesn’t have to be.
If you change it to ‘I am happy because I ______’. Insert anything into that last blank that you are fortunate to have (eyesight, two hands, hearing etc. – even just one of them). You now have something that someone around the world would perhaps be happy just to have to even ‘kill to have it.’ To see what anything looks like. To hear what music sounds like. To Walk. To touch something with your fingers again. To live.
It all starts with gratitude for even the most fundamental things you happen to have right now.