So we're going to start with a poem,
An anonymous poem.
At first,
I was dying to finish high school so I could get to college.
And then I was dying to finish college so I could get a job.
And then I was dying to get married so I could have kids.
And then I was dying for the kids to grow up and be out of the house so I could get back to work.
And then I was dying to retire.
And then suddenly I realized I was dying.
And I forgot to live.
And I think that a lot of us can relate to these words because we do tend to live our lives this way,
Believing that we can only start living once something big has really happened,
Once we've graduated,
Once we get that promotion,
Once we get that perfect partner,
Once we become that perfect version of ourselves,
That only then Will we be able to arrive?
And then finally enjoy the life.
That we have.
And it's not just even the big moments,
Right?
It's just day to day where we're always like,
Oh,
Tomorrow or the weekend or once I unload the car,
Once I finish with the yard or this project,
Right?
There's this sense that there's always something here that needs to be done,
That needs to be fixed,
That needs to be improved.
Before I can relax.
And enjoy my life.
And so we keep chasing,
We keep chasing this moment.
And yet,
We never arrive.
And in psychology in the 70s,
They came up with a term for this,
The hedonic treadmill,
Right?
This chasing that,
You know,
I'll finally,
You know,
Once I get something,
I'll finally feel like the success,
I'll finally feel like I'm worthy,
I'll finally feel like I'm enough.
But what they found was that whenever we get to that next level,
We graduate,
We get the next promotion,
We get the partner,
We get the big bonus,
We adapt very quickly to what that is.
And then we're no longer very interested in it,
We're just the next thing.
And the Buddha talked about this 2,
500 years ago.
That it's like desire is like trying to quench our thirst with salt water.
Like you never quench it,
You just get more thirsty.
And so the psychologists found and the Buddha found that in fact,
This chasing,
This waiting for life to happen in the future when I get some next thing doesn't lead to happiness,
It leads to a lot of unhappiness.
It leads to a lot of suffering.
And we know this intellectually.
We know this.
And yet,
We still keep thinking,
Well,
Maybe I was just looking for the wrong thing,
Right?
Now it's just the simple life,
Right?
Or it's enlightenment,
Or it's my higher self,
Or it's the partner and then nothing else.
I promise after that,
Nothing else.
But the solution isn't finding the right landing.
It's seeing that,
In fact,
There never was a landing.
The Buddha teaches us this in the wisdom of impermanence,
Of interconnectedness,
That everything that is arising,
It's just different conditions coming together,
Shifting,
Changing,
Shifting and changing,
Shifting and changing,
Things appearing and going out of appearance,
Right?
Just you look at nature,
You look at buildings,
You look at trees,
At flowers,
Mountains,
Right?
We may not see it day to day.
Day to day,
Our experience might be that everything appears pretty solid.
Time we saw those time-lapse photography of like a flower or a plant coming into being it was pretty amazing when you see it and you're like oh my god look at that look how quickly it's coming out of the soil transforming things coming together and then it you know appears this flower and then it disappears right in the time-lapse photography really giving us that sense of impermanence of interconnectedness.
And it's true for us,
Too,
That we are impermanent and interconnected as well.
It would be amazing if we could see a time-lapse photography of not just our body changing from the moment we're born,
Until we're very,
Very old,
Seeing that would be pretty shocking and pretty insightful in itself.
But if we could also see how our thoughts and our feelings and our emotions and what we like one moment that we don't like the next moment,
To see how that is all so very,
Very fragile and fleeting and changing moment by moment by moment.
And so the conclusion,
When we look at this,
Is that there is nothing solid to hold on to.
There is nowhere to land.
It's like we're on a roller coaster and the roller coaster is going up and down and it's moving all around.
It's moving non-stop.
And the whole time we're on the roller coaster,
We keep looking ahead and going,
I want my ride to be over there.
I want to be back there.
Oh,
Look at them.
They're where I want to be.
The whole time,
We want the ride to be somewhere other than where it is.
And we're so focused on where the ride is going.
That what we miss is that the ride is the experience.
We think that life begins when we graduate,
When we get that first job,
When we get to the next level,
When we meet the right person,
When we buy the house,
When we do the remodel,
When we do the next remodel,
When we retire.
But the ride just keeps moving.
It doesn't stop.
And we think that life then is this destination somewhere.
But life is the ride.
And we are the ride.
This is where the analogy shifts.
It's not that we're on a ride.
We are the rise.
And the ride keeps moving and changing,
Right?
That we go from excitement,
Right,
Down to a little bit of boredom,
And then back up to joy,
And then down to sorrow,
Right?
And then up to pleasure,
And then back to discomfort,
And then up to winning,
And then down to losing,
Right?
It's constantly changing,
Constantly moving.
And when we see that it's always changing,
Realizing there is no state that we could hold on to.
Because it's all just changing.
And realizing this.
Right?
We stop putting life off for the future.
Thinking that it's in tomorrow,
That it's in the next achievement,
That it's in the next problem,
That it's in the next version of ourselves.
Because all that's happening when we're doing that is we are missing the life that is happening now.
And seeing.
That in the ordinary is the extraordinary.
That when we stop looking to the future that we start looking around here.
And seeing what it is that's here right now.
And just those little moments of our morning coffee or our morning tea,
Right?
Having a conversation with a friend,
Having a laugh with a friend.
A stranger that does something kind for us,
Or our dogs meeting us at the door with that super enthusiasm,
Enthusiastic greeting.
And just the joy.
Of being alive at all without needing for this moment to be anything other than what it is.
And this is how gratitude naturally arises,
Then bottoms up,
Not top down,
Bottoms up,
Because there is a gratitude and an appreciation for life.
Because many of us,
Not everyone,
But many of us have extraordinarily good conditions.
We're not millionaires.
We're not maybe terribly wealthy.
But we've got pretty good conditions.
And yet we don't appreciate it.
We always think it should be something more.
And so the more that we're here and we're appreciating the life that is here.
Right,
The more naturally we appreciate and have gratitude.
That in the mundane moments,
There's a sense of ease and relaxing into the mundane moments.
There's not much going on.
The ride has to go just straight sometimes.
It just needs that sense of just leveling out,
Right?
Or when the ride is exciting and you just got some recognition for something or some praise or you met someone or something really good is happening,
A deep sense of gratitude for those conditions arising.
Yay,
This is fun.
It won't last.
And that's not in a pessimistic sense.
It's in a wisdom of realizing,
Yeah,
This feels good.
So when the ride starts to turn,
We don't panic.
Because we realize,
Yes,
You can't have up without down.
So when the ride does become a little rough.
And we did get some criticism,
Or we got taken advantage of,
Or something unpleasant is going on.
Maybe we're experiencing some loss.
It's the wisdom and the compassion to be with what's here in this moment.
To recognize that this is what's happening.
And the more that we can open and open to the feelings of what's here.
The more that we stop pushing against it.
That we find that this is actually bearable as well,
Because we do realize we couldn't have one without the other,
But this won't last.
This too is impermanent.
So perhaps the invitation is not to find a perfect place to land.
But to stop looking for one.
To stop postponing our lives,
To stop imagining that everything has got to come together in order before we can actually appreciate what's here.
Because the ride will continue.
There will still be up and down and hot and cold and gain and loss and pleasure and pain and praise and criticism.
Joy and sorrow.
The ride will keep moving because that's what the ride does.
It keeps moving.
And the freedom comes when we stop waiting for life to happen,
Stop believing that it's going to happen in some future moment,
And we realize that it has been happening all along.
We just weren't paying attention to it.
It's happening now.
In the good times,
In the mundane times,
In the unpleasant times,
There is so much more going on that we are missing by believing that our happiness,
That we can finally start living in the future.
Everything you want is right here in this moment.
And when we recognize that and open up to it,
What you find is this moment is more than enough.
More than enough.
