I have been working in the labor pool of the hospital the past few weeks where I have had the opportunity to meet a variety of people I probably would have never met had this pandemic never occurred. I met one individual in particular who was a traveling sterile processing technologist. He does not have a family, permanent home, a consistent job or friends nearby but found life contentment in meditation, traveling and the detachment of expectations. He explained to me how his travels have always been his answer to another layer of a closed mind, that he gains new perspectives when he immerses himself as if he was a child again into the opportunities to be exposed to the expansiveness that this life has to offer.
Our lives contain abundant potential sources of happiness but sometimes we become victims of the thick fog of negative thought processes because we believe that if we focus on all that has gone wrong, that somehow it will provide us with the motivation we need to overcome the current challenge. When we begin to choose all that bring us joy, a shift occurs in the sensation of our existence. What was once a depressed emptiness now becomes a light and airy sensation that reminds us of the enormous space that we have yet to explore. When we experience the ebb and flow, we can then understand that the feeling of being alive is something to be savored and held close.
We often refer to happiness during a momentous event but the continuous contentment we have the ability to experience is deprived as a product of our appreciation. When we find ourselves struggling to list one element of existence in which brings us joy, we should examine the cause of this blockage standing between us and experiencing happiness.
We likely been conditioned to believe that the proper response to unmet expectations is one of sadness, anger, guilt, or fear. To make joy a fixture in our existence, we must accept we have the ability to adopt a positive thought process and the ability to access our inner child. We may have to detach ourselves and look at the world through the lens of our inner child, viewing the world for the very first time. Letting the innocent part of us come out to play might be a way for us to experience the world again in simplicity and purity. Consciously reminding ourselves of the innocence we once had early in our life allows us to experience things fully. When we were children, our world was everything. We absorbed without judgement. As we grow older, we tend to notice the problems within the world and restrict our self due to the expectation of our life route.
Absorbing these small joys of each day expands the sensation of being connected with the world when we become more attuned to all that surrounds us, bringing us more in harmony with our environment. With each passing moment, we find that these “small things” bring a great level of appreciation for everything we encounter as we learn that we live miracles every given day.
Namaste!
Angie
Breathe. Sweat. Smile. 