A few days ago, I was scheduled on for an early shift at work. It was 6am, and I was doing my early morning commute that I’ve done so many times. Outside of my window, I could see the beautiful mountains in the distance and the early morning mist laying below them, it was utterly peaceful.
When I first started driving, I was so content and caught up in the beauty of the moment, but after a while, my focus drifted. I began to think about the future, my goals, and all the different things in life that I would like to improve or change.
It wasn’t long before I had fallen into the common mindset of, when I have “that”, or when I get “there”, to a different stage in life, things will be so much better.
But then something clicked, each season of our life, whether we are young or old, married or single, travelling the world or settled at home with kids, will eventually pass. I realised that, everything in our life right now is only for a short season, and one day that season will pass.
The illusion of perfection
It can be easy to fall into the mindset of wanting everything to be perfect, and we often believe that once everything is how we would like it to be, it will stay that way. But the truth is, it probably won’t. Things will pass, people will move on, and we will continue into what is next. Things will change, and each stage of life will come with its own beauty and with its own challenges.
This revelation excited me, because, admittedly, I spend a good bit of time chasing my goals and wanting to create a perfect world around me. However, I don’t think pursuing your goals is bad, it’s good to be motivated and hardworking, but with this revelation, I realised that there’s also a lot of joy that comes from appreciating right now for what it is, instead of spending so much time waiting for things to change.
If we spend our whole life like that, we may miss out on all the beautiful things we have in the present.
Adopting gratitude
I think there will be a lot of peace that comes with appreciating all the little details of life and adopting a mindset of gratitude for all of it.
Gratitude may not be our go to way of thinking, and it can take effort to walk in gratitude. But the thing is, we are the only ones who can choose what in life we focus on, whether we choose to live life enjoying the present or whether we spend our life eternally waiting for what’s next. Whether we choose gratitude for all that we have or whether we lose our life wishing for something else. Only we can make that choice, no one can make it for us.
I’ll say this one last thing, even though I’m still learning this myself, I believe that living in gratitude for the present will be worth it. Life is going to pass us by in the blink of an eye, and when I look back, I don’t want to regret spending my time wishing for things to be different.
I hope we all look back on life, all its forms, with gladness. I hope we remember its joy and its challenges and still feel grateful for what we had.