A friend asked me,"Do you think more goals come along after achieving hyper-focused goals we've had for years? I've been chasing my goals so long that I literally do not know what I would do once I achieve these goals. I'm like a dog chasing cars- what would I ever do if I caught one?"
Did you see the Disney film Tangled? We’re like Rapunzel. She
had a dream to go see the lights. Along that journey, her experiences
stacked up and built her into a new person, so that once she had seen
the lights, she realized that seeking that goal had led her to a new
goal.
You cannot make a new joy the one thing you set up to seek. A
boy dreams of becoming a pilot but when he goes to flight school he
finds out it is hard work. He perseveres because he wants to fly. When
he does get his dream, he enjoys it for quite some time, and he always
does enjoy it, but the novelty does wear off a little. Suddenly he
discovers photography and uses his plane for aerial shots. He has a new
dream to pursue.
To Seek Joy makes Joy a noun, a thing we can attain or lose. To Enjoy is a verb- it’s
a thing we can keep doing over and over again. I think we can have
more Joy in Verbs than in Nouns. I mean: A Thing is passing- Doing is
continual.
A man and a woman fall blissfully in love and
decide to get married. One morning she wakes up and realizes she no
longer feels that “old thrill” about him, and she doesn’t feel the way
she did when she married him. She is not “In Love”, but she thinks about
how they care for each other, and decides she still loves him, and that
she will continue to. She realizes Love as a Noun is a thing you can
lose, but To Love as a Verb is something she can do. She talks to her
husband, and he agrees- that “spark” is gone, but as they say, nothing
lasts.. Should they quit their marriage because they lost a thing they
had? They decide instead to find new “sparks.” They take a road trip
together, do new activities, spend time together, and discover new ways
they can love each other. They spend over 50 years discovering Loving as a Verb, discovering ever new horizons of caring and connection.
People
who try to make one pivotal experience last forever and be their true
satisfaction are often unhappy because they are trying to make a moment
last forever. The true value of those moments is that they are rare and
precious- that they do not last. Instead of despairing because we cannot
make a moment last, we might find more joy in just savoring the moment.
As we savor it, it becomes part of us, and even when it is over, we
have it always.
Every joy we do not try to prolong
artificially leads us to new joys.
What we grasp and cling at, we lose-
what we let go of, we find we can keep forever.
