Sad and Empty

Happiness is such an elusive thing. A child playing in the rain is happy but an adult caught in a drizzle is irritated or worried he won’t get to his appointment on time. What happens to us when anyway we grow to adulthood and life becomes less of a walk in the park and more of a bitter pill to swallow or a series of bumps and grinds we need to go through?

As a child, we are curious and energetic. We ask endless questions about the hows and whys of everything around us. When we become adults, the questions stop, not because we have discovered the answers, but because our focus shifts to achieving that comfortable lifestyle or that next promotion with a corner office and a bigger paycheck.

As a child, we are fearless. We embrace change. We are fascinated by it. We seek adventure and new experiences. We have a boundless energy for growth and learning. As adults we get stuck in a rut. We establish our routines and seldom deviate from them. Change becomes anathema. We stop having fun and learning from the new challenges and experiences. We would rather stay in our comfort zone than brave a strange world.

As an adult, we highlight the negative. Nobody appreciates my work. Somebody else always get the big breaks. I am so bored, nothing ever happens to me. These are some of our sentiments. It seems that we have acquired a tunnel vision that sees only the obstacles we have to go through and the pain that we must suffer. How do we turn this situation around? How do we start being happy?

We must become a child again. Being a child does not being childish. It means seeing the world with fresh eyes. It means being enthralled by the mysteries of life. It means asking questions again. Why am I in this world? What is my purpose in life? What is meaningful to me? These are some of the questions we might forgotten us we enter the rat race. We simply must ask them again. When we start questioning, we are again open to learning and our capacity for growth expands.

Being a child again also means embracing changes. Life is a constant change, as the song goes. It is really quite correct. Nothing can stop these changes in our lives. If we embrace change, we can adapt faster than if we fear, ignore, or worry about them.

If we are bored or depressed, we should get going. Instead of using pills or drugs to give our spirits a boost, we should exercise or learn a new sport, go to spa, watch a funny silent movie, listen to music, or talk to our friends. No stimulation from drugs or pills can compare to the high created by your body. Life is not boring, we only make it so. If we stick to the routine, the ordinary, the comfortable, then we make our life boring. But this does not have to so.

Adults should fall in love with regularity – and I don’t mean romantically. We should shower our family, friends and the people surrounding us with love. We should not be stingy with affection. Love cannot be given in small doses. We must be generous with it. It is only when we are generous with love that our supply seemed so limitless. Loving the world expands our capacity for growth boundlessly and so we are boundless.