If you are not fulfilled by what you do, change it. Life is too short to not do what truly gives you a sense of fulfillment. That’s not to say that every day will be rainbows and butterflies. There will be tough days. There will be tough weeks. Seasons of time where you need to put your head down, endure and push through. Yet in pushing through we become passionate. The word passion is from the Latin word pati, which means ‘suffer’. And through our endurance of that which is uncomfortable, our pushing through the difficult time, we become people of passion. However at the end of the day, you must ask yourself whether the life decision, job or career choice you have made so far is fulfilling? Look past your immediate emotions and current feelings. Are you filled with hope and happiness when you think about your job? Or are you filled with dread and despair? Is what you are going through worth becoming passionate about? Is the end result worth being subjected to something that is unpleasant for a time to find fulfillment in the end?
Happiness is a fleeting emotional response to something deeper and below the surface. We all strive for happiness and want to hold on to it for as long as we can. However seeking happiness is like seeking something that cannot be caught. It is like trying to hold water in your hands. You have it but do you really? Therefore we don’t seek happiness. We seek that which fills us with joy and hope. Because when we find those things, we also find showers of happiness. There is a poem/song I enjoy written by a band named The Fray. It seems to capture the essence of happiness. Happiness, is just outside my window I thought it crashed blowing eighty-miles an hour? Or is happiness a little more like knocking On your door, and you just let it in? Happiness, feels a lot like sorrow Let it be, you can't make it come or go But you are gone. not for good but for now Gone for now, feels a lot like gone for good Happiness, is a firecracker sitting on my headboard Happiness was never mine to hold Careful child, light the fuse and get away Cause happiness throws a shower of sparks Happiness, damn near destroys you Breaks your faith, to pieces on the floor So you tell yourself, that's enough for now Happiness has a violent roar Happiness, is like the old man told me Look for it, but you'll never find it all Let it go, live your life and leave it Then one day, wake up and she'll be home Happiness – The Fray So we begin to ask ourselves the question that may scare us when asked. Am I truly happy where I am? Have I been trying to make my circumstances work because it’s the easiest thing to do? And to take it a step further, a question we should ask is, have I not tried because I am afraid of failure? Some of us do not try to take the next step out of our current circumstances because in the back of our mind we can justify not succeeding with not really trying. And in not trying, we haven’t failed. We put off our hopes and dreams. We set aside our goals and ambitions so that questions of “what if” can be said without the weight of “I failed”. Teddy Roosevelt stated “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat”. A much more modern way to say that would be to say it is better to try and fail than never to have tried at all. But can our heart take the loss or failure? Coming from a place where my heart has been broken to pieces, I can tell you that I dared to love a baby without the guarantee that the baby would be mine. And after two years of pouring out that love into the little one, in the end I feel he was stolen from me. My heart still mourns at his loss. For which I will one day ask my creator the age old question, “why?” But for now, I can honestly say that the risk was worth it. I wouldn’t trade away the memories I have of cuddling, tickling and hearing his little laugh. I was his rock and his protector. I was daddy. And I will love him til my last breath. So much pain is associated with that specific situation. I now know how it feels to have loved and lost. To be truly full of joy, hope and love at the chance of being a husband and a daddy. But the story does not end there. In the midst of such great pain and sorrow I have not given up the hope of being a daddy. I have not held back from loving another child with everything my heart can give. Even at the risk of losing again, each day I make a choice to love with everything that I have. The question you may ask yourself when reading this is “why would anyone ever do that again?” And the answer is because in being a daddy, I found fulfillment and joy. So the risk was and is worth the reward to me. What is it that something or someone that is worth risking failure, rejection or loss for you? What is worth you putting it all out in the open, trying your hardest, and being the most vulnerable for? If you don’t immediately know the answer it is okay. But don’t give up the search for this answer. And even if you do know the answer, don’t hold back from pursuing fulfillment. Maybe your current circumstances do not support your end result or goal. What needs to be done to change that? In finding fulfillment, you will find those showers of happiness; and your heart will be free.
1 Comment
DMT
6/20/2018 03:46:18 pm
Wow. What a blessing you are. As someone who has tried and failed miserably, been shattered to pieces and had to walk the lonely road to finding those pieces of myself, collect and hold them together, I can identify. I can also identify with the wounded heart that’s too afraid to try. Hanging in the shadows, holding up the wall just to preserve my heart and sanity. Not wanting to deal with the pain, the rejection, and failure.
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