What is the biggest fear in our
lives? What motivates us to actually get up and do something? What motivates
us? Are we afraid that we will not be truly happy? That we will spend our lives
in vain and will not fulfill the full potential that we know we have in us?
What happens to us when we really believe these fears, making them another
reality and not just another unfounded concern? And how to prevent this process
from happening?
Over a relatively short life, I
have had many roles and positions. I was a dedicated officer in the IDF, in the
corps that is purely all about education, for more than five years. I was a
Shlicha (emissary) of the Jewish Agency in Washington DC area. An international
relations student at the Hebrew University and also an assistant to the Director
of the Jewish Agency. Every position unfolded within it great responsibility,
self-fulfillment and especially - personal development and giving for a cause I
saw fit. In every point in time, in the past ten years, since I graduated high
school, I did what I wanted. I chose and I followed a path that seemed most
appropriate. I have no regrets about anything, have no thoughts of what would
happen if, as I enjoyed this path. The only thing I wonder to myself about,
looking back, is weather I used and enjoyed enough my experiences as they
happened, or did I just cherished it later on. "Do we really know how to
take those moments that life gives us, and enjoy them when they happen?
How many times do we find ourselves longing for the past thinking things were
so good back then, actually forgetting what we have suffered at that point,
when it actually happened. How many times we do not understand why we are not
happy and do not good about ourselves in the ‘here and now’, because on the
surface, looking at the facts, we have the recipe for happiness in hand. If so,
why? Why do we fail to realize and enjoy those great moments in life and make it
part of our way of life, at the same moment as it happens?
I think too often we look at the
past with nostalgia and at the present with dismissive and fear. This reflects
in the small things - we keep waiting for things in our life to get better, we
think about how to improve our lives, check out what we need for our lives to
be better. We tell ourselves that we need a just little better income and a bit
more tranquility about our children or a good marriage or good friends, or a
good job. “If we only have this and that”, we say to ourselves, “only then we
will become truly happy”. This sentence is a sweet illusion. We totally ignore
the present when we constantly depend our happiness in what we need yet to
achieve, and if that happens, then everything will be fine. The real problem
is, that this way, we will never truly be happy. Because even if you suddenly
will have good relationships, and you will gain tranquility about your children
– you will always think of something else that you are missing. What we need.
What is the next big thing we want to achieve. Because human nature, if you ask
me, prevents those thoughts about what is missing, as allowing it to aspire and
think forward, about the future. That thinking and aspiring, they give us a
sense of the future, of expectation, of hope. Because we have learned that without
this hope for a better future, we will have to make do. And then we think, if what
we have now is the best that we can have - what kind of life is this? Is that
all that life has to offer us? How can it be the best and most of life? And
from this point, we start to dig, and think, and be confused. And we examine about
ourselves - what more has to happen will be happy, because current reality does
not give us that happiness we are looking for. Because we lack ... This creates
a trap, a vicious cycle, and we find ourselves drowning in the ‘honey- trap’ of
life, instead of trying to come out and just lick the honey and savor the sweet.
I read once, regarding facts we
do not know about the little things in life, that if you are ever stuck in a
swamp, the way out of it is not by fighting it and raving around, but to lift
up slowly one leg and steadily you will get out of it.
When we are constantly dealing
with what is missing and what could be better, and what we need to do to make
us better, we actually continue to struggle in the swamp instead allowing he
good things that we already have to flow in our blood and overwhelm us. We,
with our own hands, bring ourselves to a state of ongoing suffering and refuse
to recognize and see the good when he is already here looking at us and tries
to get inside us. All we have left to do is just to open the door and let him
be. Let us be. This ’here and now’ that is stronger than anything else. In the
end of the day, we forget that our future is actually the present that is over,
and in order to allow ourselves this happiness in the future, we need to know
to embrace the present with both hands, before it becomes the past.
I know, it is important to strive
and get better all the time and to move forward. It is important to work and
engage around targets and the things we believe in. This aspiration is part of
the human fabric of what makes us better and more successful. But this does not
contradict, as soon as we know to distinguish these two points: one of ambition
and personal development and the other of suffering and self-flagellation, then
we can focus on those real things that keep us from being happy. We could
distinguish between the main issues and secondary in importance. As long as we
mix things from these two groups, we invest energy on the wrong things, and so,
we will drown in the swamp of quicksand, thinking that if the struggle against
it, we can get out. We will continue to be part of a honey-trap, like living
our lives in a cage of gold. The real question is, in the end, is do we have
the will and the strength to get out of this situation, and to move ourselves
to a state of prosperity, joy, and happiness. If we want it and decide that
this is the way. Our way. And whether we are willing to go through the personal
process to get there, with very challenging experiences that will lead us even if
we don’t want to, to gain insights about life.
If so, the main question is, will
we know to enjoy and be happy, without going through a terrible sorrowful way
that will make us understand all this. What shall we do with it. Because in the
end of the day, we all want is simply to be happy.
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