Balancing one’s dreams and drives with the harsh realities and circumstances of life can be a challenge, right? For most of my life, I have lived with big dreams. I have dreamt of being famous, of making history, of writing widely read books, of speaking before large crowds. And, all of this before having my lunch.
But then, there is my life as it really is…my “real” life with it’s ordinariness. For me, my growth edge has been in learning how to allow life to evolve instead of attempting to control life and its evolution. I’m finding, too, it is infinitely more satisfying than living with the haunting fear that time is running out and my dreams have not all materialized.
Carl Jung used to say, “…while we may be the protagonist of our own lives, we are also the extras or spear carriers in some larger drama…”
What did he mean? That life…your life and mine…unfolds in ways that neither you nor I could ever completely control. In other words, we dream of doing but then discover we are simply being done. Or, as someone once put it, “We seem destined to make choices.”
Ah, the ambiguity of life. And, the secret to happiness?
Well, maybe it’s different for you, but I’m learning something of the mystery expressed in the words of Walt Whitman,
“I exist as I am, and that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and That is myself. So whether I come to my own today or in ten Thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal Cheerfulness, I can wait.”
Can I?
Can you?
Maybe the secret of happiness is in learning to wait. And, maybe the secret of waiting is mastering the art of losing oneself in the life that is–the only life that ever is–your life as it is right now…this present moment.
So, relax my friend and relish this moment. It’s all there is. It’s everything it needs to be. And, in the words of the poet, It is “eternity in the palm of your hand.” It is YOU in the palm of Eternity’s hand.
What could be better than this? What more could you really want?
