March 2012

I believe happiness is an unrealistic goal, as it is fleeting and not sustainable. No feeling is. Life won’t always feel good. Sometimes we will be sad or feel down. That is simply a fact of being human. As my friend Kevin J. Thornton says,?”Happiness is for house cats.” I believe a far more realistic–not to mention attainable–goal is FULFILLMENT. You may not be happy, but you can be fulfilled. To me, that’s a far more realized life anyway. Sometimes we won’t know happiness until we’ve truly allowed ourselves to experience our sadness.

You also get to meet people where they are. Those who are insightful and evolved can also be so to a fault, meaning it’s easy to judge and dismiss others who may not have the same insight. It takes humility and compassion to allow others to?stumble in life even as we hold them to our standards. No one is perfect, and we will all mess up and sell out to our history at some point. Again, part of being human. I often have to remind myself that just because I have certain insights into life, I’m no better than a homeless slacker who keeps letting his past failures dictate his behavior. I’ve done that too. I am still learning and growing, and I’m just as imperfect as anyone else. 😉

Shit, I’ve done buttloads of drugs and drank myself into a stupor more than a few times. A lot of us have. So we get to empathize with those who still do and call them forth into living a more balanced and healthy life, but you can only do?that by truly CARING about them. People won’t listen to you if they think you are criticizing or judging them. They’ll only do it more to spite you. Just so they can feel righteous in THEIR way. So you gotta roll up your sleeves and be willing to go deep with people and find out what kind of life they really want for themselves, then support them in creating it. Sadly, too many people say, “I don’t have the time for that” or “It’s not my problem.” Which only continues perpetuating the cycle. Like Dr. Seuss said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” 😉