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Sunday, January 7th, 2001 There is a general tendency for complacency when things are going well. For some reason you relax and, before long, you seem to
slip back into old habits. When your life is a struggle, it engenders a deeper energy inside you to overcome the challenge and get yourself back on your feet. But as soon as you achieve this you lose your edge, your
energy, your will to keep moving forward, and before long you are right back where you started... Last year, on August 6, I wrote about this struggle inside me between that part of me that always wanted to do more, be more, go further, and the part of me that wanted to stop where I was and enjoy the feeling of having arrived. I have thought more about this over the past few months as the different parts of my life unfolded up to this point. Jacqui once commented to me that I would never be happy. This month, on the Home Page of this site I have included a quote from my Grand Uncle, Malcolm Muggeridge, about the pursuit of happiness. What is it about us that drives us to seek a state in our lives where we can stop and say - "I am Happy". The more I consider this, and how it applies to me, I see the utter futility in its execution. Under The Philosopher's Pen, I have a detailed discussion on why I think this is the case. I have found the secret magic. I know that sounds like utter rubbish... in fact, if I were you I would probably be moving the mouse back over the location field and going somewhere else. It is astounding a realisation. It is so simple in its construct, and yet so powerful in its application. The pursuit of happiness is not what we should be embarking on. Happiness should be the attitude with which we get up and go out every day, in the pursuit of what it is we wish to create in our lives. It is in this pursuit that we will find satisfaction. And we should never seek to be content. It is that state of contentment that slows us down, and blocks the creative energy... Be discontent. Find the next thing that you wish to achieve, and then go get it. When you look around you at your life, find the things that make you "unhappy" and think about them carefully. Separate these things from your emotional happiness. Be happy anyway! Because you have the power and tools to affect whatever change is necessary to bring these things to a new level - one that you are "happy" with! So - be happy that you are making the changes you want, give them the energy they require, and enjoy them when they come to fruition. But don't be content! Keep that energy flowing, find the next thing and go after it. The more you do this, the greater it makes you feel. This cycle is the basis for our enthusiasm, and it is enthusiasm that is the key to life. |
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Sunday, January 21st, 2001 What is it about weddings? I attended my brother-in-law's wedding recently. Have you ever watched people at weddings. They act differently at a wedding. Somehow, there seems to be this air about people. Each of us sits there in the church, or at the reception and we think about ourselves. Is it just me, or do you find yourself doing this too? You look at your current relationship, or marriage, and evaluate it against how you felt "back then". I did that, and I was overwhelmed by my conclusions... I started to think about why it is that we get married in the first place. Why do we feel compelled to have to go through this ceremony? What is it about the whole process that makes us do it? Is it our fear of losing the other person, so we want to lock them in? Is it an obligation determined by the precedence set by our parents? Is it really that we want God to bless our relationship? What is it? Whatever it is, it seems to be there, though the years, each time we attend another wedding together. Jacqui and I have had our fair share of disagreements. We have struggled to find some form of balance between co-operation and compromise. We continue to struggle to find a foundation for our communication that allows us to understand each other and eliminate confusion in our different approaches to things. And we still have an enormous amount of work to do to gain some flow in our intimacy, and in our sexuality. It is probably fair to say that our marriage is extremely hard work for both of us. But there is something, after every emotional conversation, after every disagreement, after all the conflict subsides, that keeps us together. And it is that something that surfaces again at weddings. |
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