Jul 13, 2011

Thoughts From the Heart – Inspired by @Farnya

Stan Faryna wrote about happiness and love just the other day. It was the first post I have read in a while that I felt the urge to respond to with a comment in a long time. I have written a few comments about Google+ in various areas, but not a personal response to anything else.

My comment turned out to be a bit longer than usual, and I thought I would share my quick thoughts here, as well, since they stand alone – but do go read his post. Here is a snippet of the post that I was responding to:

What is happiness?

Happiness, it turns out, is being truly what one is. And happiness is also in knowing that a thing is truly what it is. And here is love. Love wants us to be always true. True to ourselves. And, yes, love wants us to find, know, and sustain what is true in the world. And love wants what we love to be true forever.

I want you to be true and forever. Not for me! For you! For you. Because I am of no consequence to you. I am no one for you – just a stranger on the bus.

But you – you are everything for you.

And if you will be you, truly and forever. I have given you the gift of forever. And there’s nothing more important that I could ever do. For me. And, also, for you.

And my response:

Your last paragraph about happiness really struck a chord with me.

After all the trials I have been put through in the past month or two, I realized that I was unable to be happy in a relationship if I wasn’t happy with where I was myself. A break away from my ex-girlfriend has been a wake-up call that helped me discover what really wasn’t working between us. We may have had our differences with opinion and habits, but deep down, neither of us were happy with where we were at in life, and essentially took it out on each other.

Money is a huge stressor in life, especially when I have a young daughter to take care of, but I do agree that money can’t buy happiness. I am better off with money than without it if given the choice, of course. The lack of money does not mean I can not strive to do the good work, to create different streams of income for myself, or to reach out and find the bare necessities.

I don’t have the money now, but I am happier than I was. Walking over an hour a day, lifting weights several times in the week, watching my baseball games and reading when I have time have all helped me improve mentally and physically to the point where I can start doing actual work once again and improve upon my life.

I don’t think I am capable of blowing a huge sum of money quickly. One never knows until the situation presents itself in front of you though. Hopefully, I will get that opportunity.

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