The holidays are drawing to a close. Another round of Christmas cheer and ringing in a new year has passed us once again. Now what? Oh yeah, we have to return to that thing called life, and the reality of the hangover will soon creep in.
You cannot find happiness with temporary fixes
Over the past week, I read a book named “10% Happier” written by Dan Harris. In one of the last chapters of the book, he referenced a quote by a meditation guru named Joseph Goldstein. It read: “Everything in the world is ultimately unsatisfying and unreliable because it won’t last.”
This quote struck me.
There is nothing that lasts forever in this life, yet we spend so much of our energy to get it, and in the process we become unhappy. Even when we get something like a Christmas gift, it doesn’t take long before our happiness and contentment with it fade. There is a good reason why the malls are packed on the first shopping day after the Christmas break. People are trying to keep the happiness alive, nothing we get is all that satisfying because it just doesn’t last.
You are everlasting happiness
The only thing in your life that lasts forever is you. Yes, you. How can you know what forever is when you are no longer alive to experience it. Forever is what our lives are, it is all we will ever know. So, why chase the perfect holiday season? The perfect gift? The perfect anything? The holidays don’t last, your gifts won’t last, and ultimately nothing in this physical world will last.
Spend more time and energy working on your happiness instead of attempting to make your world more happy with stuff and unachievable expectation? Everlasting happiness only comes from the efforts you spend on you, if you fail to work on you, you’ll be everlastingly hungover from the cheap fixes of joy from the day before.