I try to be open to recovery lessons wherever I am and found one
from watching Scrooge on TV this holiday season. When Scrooge and his
nephew were having their argument over happiness, Scrooge said that the
nephew "had no right to be happy because he was too poor." You have to
wonder what was holding Scrooge back from happiness, as the nephew
correctly noted that Scrooge was rich enough, but still was not able to
achieve a state of happiness. I believe in Scrooge's mind, he thought
there is no state of being "rich enough" unless that would mean he
possessed all the wealth in the world. He saw himself as still not rich
enough to be happy because he did not posses every last penny in
existence. While Scrooge raised the bar for his supposed level of
happiness to an unobtainable standard by anyone, he also left no room
for his continual state of happiness even if he was able to possess all
the world's wealth.

You see, even if scrooge somehow possessed all the money in the world,
as soon as he would spend a dollar or even a penny of it he would not
have all the money in the world any longer. Once Scrooge realized this
point, his happiness would be non existent as he would be concentrating
and grateful not on the rest of his remaining wealth, but on the
missing penny he was not able to obtain that someone else
possessed...when a man's mind is concentrated he is blind. People can
confuse their net worth with their self worth. Sometimes wealthy people
lose their fortunes and commit suicide. All their self worth was
artificial and store bought. All their self worth was locked up in the
bank vault and when it was gone they had no internal, real self worth
to fall back on...nothing worth living for inside themselves.

They tell a story about the Buddha and his monks who were sitting by a
road when a distraught farmer wanders by and asks them if they have
seen any cows. The farmer goes on to say how miserable he is and tells
the monks his sesame crop has failed and now all of his 10 cows have
wandered off and without them he knows he will die. The Buddha tells
the farmer that they have not seen his cows and to look in another
direction. When the farmer leaves, the Buddha tells his monks, "See how
lucky you are that you have no cows, otherwise you would be suffering
and in as much misery as that farmer." These lessons from Scrooge and
the Buddha reinforces in me to be happy "as-is" and to not put too many
demands or prerequisites on my happiness and contentment. When we put
too many demands on our happiness, we are sure to fail sooner or later.
When we realize that happiness is our God-given right and we have the
potential to be happy as-is, with no outside demands, we are surer to
find it. Or as Thoreau wrote: "I am grateful for what I am and have. My
thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contended one can be
with nothing definite - only a sense of existence." When we wake up in
the morning each day with a sense of gratitude, such as Thoreau wrote
about, for just having the privilege to live life in that moment we
will not be so dependent on all those "cows" we have tethered to
ourselves with the false hope that they are required for our happiness.

When we have an engine that is too complex and has 1000 working parts
and 1 part goes bad...the whole engine shuts down and 1 thing kills the
other 999. So it goes with too many demands we place on ourselves for
happiness and contentment...1 thing kills the other 999. Nowadays we
can see this same mentality with how many people put their happiness on
hold until sometime into the future, especially at Christmas. How much
of our life is wasted by living in the future. The other day I saw a
billboard in November advertising "summer" fun. It was late fall and
the ad was talking summer - just bypassing the upcoming winter season
altogether. Our society makes it a point to discount the present moment
and live for the future, as if nothing is worthwhile for us to live for
in the hear and now. We need to balance the future and the past with
the present to live healthy lives, but we also need to be aware of how
much of our supposed happiness is being put on hold until some future
date that never seems to come.

We tell ourselves we will be happy when we get our Masters Degree, but
then our happiness is postponed until we get our Ph.D. and then we need
a fancy car to be happy and then we need a job to pay for the car to be
happy and then we need a marriage to be happy and then we need a house
to be happy and then we need furniture to be happy and then we need to
redecorate our house to be happy and then we need kids to be happy and
then we need a boat to be happy and then we need a new job to be happy
and then we need a vacation to be happy and then we need a bigger house
to be happy and then we need to redecorate our bigger house to be happy
and then we need sleeping pills to be happy and then we need retirement
to be happy and then we need our kids and grand kids to visit more
often to be happy and then we need a vacation house to be happy and
then we need to sell our big house to be happy and then we need an
operation to be happy and finally we put our last hopes for the
happiness that has been eluding us our entire lives in our hope of
getting the right coffin...The Cult of Next!

Someday we will run out excuses for not being happy right here and
right now ... in the present moment. Happiness is so elusive when it is
always in the future. Mindfulness of the present moment is the cure for
the cult of next. You can start by being mindful of your breath and
everything you do whether eating, sitting, walking or standing - be
mindful, grateful and happy in that moment. Voluntary simplicity or
simple living helped me build a less complex engine with fewer parts to
break down. Instead of 1000 parts, I now have only a handful of parts.
Whenever we put our happiness in people, places or things we will
sooner or later be let down. Happiness starts from within us and cannot
come from anyplace else. We can achieve a "diminishing of pain" from
people, places or things, but cannot find true happiness in these
material things as the pleasure found in such things is impermanent and
can easily be turned into pain.

True happiness has no limits, whereas the aforementioned do have limits
and also contain qualities of pain in them. I'll give you a couple of
quick examples. Eating a half gallon of ice cream quickly soon turns
our mouth from feelings of pleasure into feelings of great pain.
Through the suffering of change or impermanence our beautiful bride
soon loses her physical beauty or our shiny new car gets keyed by a
vandal and we can suffer greatly from both of these examples of change.
While both the new bride and new car do possess some qualities of
pleasure in them, they also both contain qualities of pain as well, so
nothing of this sort can lead us to perfect and true happiness. We must
search for true happiness someplace else, but still balance the
material world with our real spiritual needs. Happiness lies within us
and not in things. True happiness and contentment can only be found in
the spiritual realm which is limitless.

I'll leave you with a timely quote for the holidays from Brother David
Steindl-Rast a Christian - Buddhist practitioner from his book
"Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer"

"Ordinary happiness depends on happenstance. Joy is that extraordinary
happiness that is independent of what happens to us. Good luck can make
us happy, but it cannot give us lasting joy. The root of joy is
gratefulness. We tend to misunderstand the link between joy and
gratefulness. We notice that joyful people are grateful and suppose
that they are grateful for their joy. But the reverse is true: their
joy springs from gratefulness. If one has all the good luck in the
world, but takes it for granted, it will not give one joy. Yet even bad
luck will give joy to those who manage to be grateful for it. We hold
the key to lasting happiness in our own hands. For it is not joy that
makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful."


Take Care,



V (Male)


For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive
spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write:
vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not
the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.