Do you ever get this gnawing feeling deep within your stomach that life just isn’t what it was always promoted to be? Join a very large group. You have lots of company. I’m always amazed at how many unhappy people there are. Everyone seems to want more than what they have.
As I write this, the country awaits the almost incomprehensible Mega Millions drawing for the prize of $640 million. There are long lines at retailers, with dreamy eyed customers forking over their $10, $20 and more for the chance at this incredible windfall. Chances of winning are said to be one in 176 million. Yet the frenzy continues.
Incidentally, if you try to email me and I do not respond, it may be that my own $20’s worth of tickets have hit the jackpot and I’m off somewhere buying my $30,000,000 home or running my $150,000 Lamborghini through the carwash. Yeah, right.
The truth is that tomorrow morning there will actually be people who are crushed that they did not win this lottery. That money was their future, their dream, their life! All that in spite of the fact that they KNEW they had a better chance of being hit by a meteor than of winning a $640 million lottery. (Of course, another reason I may not answer your emails after today is that I was actually hit by a 3-ton meteor as it crashed into me and my 6-year-old Hyundai on the LA Freeway. I can’t win—no, I mean it—I cannot win!)
I exaggerate, of course. But how many of us tie our happiness to other, infinitesimally smaller prizes? Things we’d like to have, own or possess in our daily lives. Like the job we didn’t get. The weight we didn’t lose. The popularity we don’t receive. The recognition at work…the date that didn’t end well. The self help gurus have taught us that “if you can conceive it, you can be it.” But that’s not always the case. I can conceive of winning that $640 million, but I assure you that I will not.
I can conceive myself of being the CEO of the company I work for, but again, there’s little likelihood that I ever will.
The underlying principle to the guru claim is that, 1., an opportunity must exist or be able to be created that enables you to achieve your dream, and 2.), you must actually do something to make it happen. It doesn’t always work out that way with dreams and “wants.” So we get depressed over it. What I have noticed in many of the depressed people I know is that they don’t have either the genuine opportunity or the will to do something about it. Whatever they want, they don’t want it enough. They’d be much happier realizing that whatever they wanted was just not meant to be, at least not for them.
On the other hand, should they find something that is even remotely attainable, and for which their “want” becomes a “passion,” then suddenly we cross over into the realm of possibilities! And therein lies a certain amount of happiness. Even if the goal is not 100% achieved, there is often much happiness in the pursuit.
Naturally, this article does not even scratch the surface. True happiness dwells within each of us. I believe in the end we will all discover that true and lasting happiness has nothing to do with material things or with fame or fortune.
But with our relationships with family, friends and strangers, and with a holy, sacred, adorable, and incomprehensible Being whose name is God.