Happy time

I dig holes.

It might not sound like too much fun, but it's what I do to earn a living in the summer. It gives me a great farmers tan, keeps me out of trouble, and gives me a lot of time to think.

Lately (for the past few years) I've had the topic of perspective constantly on my mind. But due to a few conversations I've had with Natalie in recent weeks and the amount of time I've had to dig holes I've been thinking a lot about the correlation between happiness and our perspective of time. I have been thinking a lot about how people, in general, never seem to be content with the present. Instead, we are always either looking forward to something/time in the future or we are looking back into our past and trying to relive our memories. Planning for the future and reminiscing about old times aren't bad things, in fact I think they are both innevitable and necessary in life. But they both become a problem when they consume our lives and limit our ability to live in the present.

In life we are all searching for happiness and for some reason many of us get the idea in our heads that the grass is always greener on the other side, that right now might suck but in the future we will be happy, or that if we could return to our past we would be happy again. Those ideas might not always be wrong, the grass could be greener on the other side, we could be happy in the future, or we could be happy if we were reliving our pasts. The problem with all those scenarios and perspectives is that we have no control over them now. Tomorrow doesn't yet exist, the future is not set, the past is gone and we can't return. When we are constantly looking to the future or the past for our happiness we are in essence living in a time that does not exist. If our happiness is only found in the future or the past then it too does not exist and therefore we will never find the happiness we so desperately seek.

The only way to find happiness is in the present, it is the only time that exists. The present is our past and our future. What we do now determines what we did in the past and what we will do in the future. That is precisely why it is so important to enjoy the now, not later or the before. So enjoy today, make the best of the grass you are standing on, live where you are, not where you think you should be. If you do that you will be happy now, the grass will be greener now, the past will be full of happiness and in the future you will find what you make of today.

You're life will be happiness.