Hello and welcome to 5 minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm slowly making my way across a sandy beach with my eyes down looking at pebbles and stones and seashells and just occasionally glancing up,
The tide is out so as I look down towards the edge of the sea it's quite rocky,
Lots of seaweed and rock pools and out to sea I can see,
It's called Bass Rock it's a big,
Big rock that is in the Firth of Forth,
I'm up in Scotland and I can see on it a lighthouse and actually what's quite interesting about this rock is it's got this sheen of white on it it almost looks like it's some kind of spiritual,
Ethereal place and just reading local information I've learnt that it's actually a haven for seabirds over there that's where they nest and during this breeding season they cover it with droppings and the droppings are white and at this time of year the island turns white it's quite magical actually just to look and see it and today I'm reflecting on this sense that we sometimes have to drive and get somewhere,
Get somewhere before we feel something there's a sense of I need to do this before I feel happiness or content or able to live my life in a satisfied kind of way and I'm challenging that really for me it feels as though our culture is geared up to set goals to get a goal in order that we feel better so we set goals to get somewhere and for me that doesn't make sense because when we reach the goal we just are satisfied for a little while and then we want another goal have you ever bought a car or a bit of clothing and you've had it for a week and this thing that you had wanted and craved so much no longer feels like it's satisfying you this morning while I was walking I bumped into a man walking a very tiny 14 week old puppy and we had a conversation and I just as you know I love dogs and I just scratched it and said hello to it and was asking the man about it and he said oh yes our children wanted this dog and we bought it for them as a surprise and for two weeks they couldn't wait to take it out walking and feed it and he said now it's just left to me and he was being very good humoured about it but again this sense of this urgency to get something and then once you've got it it somehow loses its appeal and for me that's very much what happens when we chase happiness happiness is not something in its own right that is at the end of a journey for me it's a little bit like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow you never get there it looks like you get to the place where the bottom of the rainbow is but there is no gold and then you look up and you realise that the rainbow has shifted position and you need to go elsewhere to find the bottom of the rainbow the truth is you never find it and that's because in a world that's set up with us to find and achieve goals we miss something that's really fundamental and what we miss is that happiness is not as a result or consequence of anything there is nothing in this world that can make you happy and the reason that you can't be made happy by stuff in this world is that because you are made of happiness happiness isn't a destination to reach happiness is a realisation of who and what you really are when you aim to get something or to do something maybe it's a new job or it's to retire or it's to have a family or it's to get a house or whatever your senses of what the next step is I'm not saying that there's anything wrong in that it's just that it doesn't hold the secret to happiness happiness lies within so today I'm asking you to reflect on where do I look for happiness?
Where do I look for happiness?
And my request is that you're curious about looking for happiness and contentment within
