Zen and Moments

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.