Tending the Fire

Everyone wants to be happy.  It’s in our nature to crave and aspire to high frequency feelings like happiness.  And because of this, we instinctively go after the things that we believe will give it to us.  We will actually work surprisingly hard for something that we think will make us happy; sacrificing valuable resources such as time, energy, and money to get it.

If we were any good at accurately judging what actually brings happiness, this would be wonderful.  But, as it happens, we are terrible at it.   What we expect to make us happy rarely does.  Worse still, the things that are proven to make us happy are those that we shrug at.

Because of this tendency, we find ourselves running in endless circles, sacrificing things with clear value to attain this elusive happiness but never quite getting back what we put in.  We spend time doing things that we don’t enjoy to buy things that never fully satisfy us.  We exert energy chasing dreams and, upon getting there, wish we had energy to enjoy them.   And we sacrifice the present chasing something that we believe exists in the future, forgetting that the future slips away every time we lose sight of the moment at hand.

Part of why happiness seems so elusive is because it is something we are, not something that we get.    The more fervently we search for happiness, the farther away it becomes.  Happiness is a spark within the spirit that waits only for us to be there with it to get the fire going.  When we look outside of ourselves for happiness, when we look to the future for happiness, we neglect that inner spark.  And as we neglect it, it grows dimmer and more difficult to find.

When we tend the fire that already burns within us, we are naturally inspired to move towards the people, places, and things that will keep that focus strong.   Instead of looking for things to make us happy we begin naturally moving towards things that help us remember the happiness that we already have.   We are naturally inclined to behave in ways that keep our fire lit, to be around people that remind us to tend it, and we gravitate towards places that provide plenty of oxygen to keep it burning.  The secret is to let happiness itself be what pushes us forward, not what we are pushing forward for.  In this simple change of focus, we stop letting the spark grow dimmer in our pursuit of fire.

Let’s commit today to acting in service to our inherent happiness instead of acting in pursuit of it.  Let us remember to take a moment and look within to find a more inspired and completing drive for what we do.  Perhaps in doing this, we will be helping those around us tend their inner flames as well.