The Life You Have

he life you have is bet­ter than the life you thought you would have. You just do not real­ize it. When peo­ple make their life plans, they actu­ally work “life-escape” into their plans. They do not plan on dis­ease, heartache, fail­ure, dis­as­ter, tur­moil, or the unpre­dictable. They out­line some lit­tle story of happily-ever-after that includes some lit­tle white picket fence. The ideal story-pictures of child­hood are not real life at all. They are the avoid­ance of the very things that give life texture.

We seek com­fort at the expense of the nec­es­sary dis­com­forts that bring wis­dom and insight. Our “dreams come true” are anes­the­sia trips. Pain avoided is a greater mis­ery cre­ated. Life’s point has lit­tle to do with how well you seem to be get­ting along. Real life is dis­cov­ered when you are finally forced to see things as less than ideal. The day you run out of all options — other than tran­scen­dence is (or will be) the best day of your life.

One day you lift your head above your expec­ta­tions and dis­cover a world beyond your wildest dreams. It is the world of agony and ecstasy. It has polar­i­ties and impos­si­bil­i­ties. Most of all, it is not ded­i­cated to mak­ing you happy. That is some­thing you will have to do for your­self. If you are wait­ing for things to work out, you will have to wait the rest of your life…or even longer.

There is noth­ing wrong with where you are or what you have. Apply a lit­tle bit of imag­i­na­tion to the raw mate­ri­als of your life and see what hap­pens. Noth­ing is going to come to you in final form. Com­plet­ing the incom­plete is where the sat­is­fac­tion lies. In the mean time, do not waste a moment com­par­ing your life to oth­ers. Take what you have and turn it into an even greater gift. By doing so you are both the giver and receiver of the gift itself.

Be extrav­a­gant!