Our own worst enemy (Tara Taylor Quinn)

I've been made aware several times in the past few days that the biggest block to what we all seem to want and few of us ever feel like we achieve - real happiness - is us. I want to be happy. My happiness is right here and I'm just too busy looking elsewhere to even know that it's arrived. Kind of like that Christmas package I was waiting for. It had arrived - was on my front porch behind the pillar where it would be safe from the rain, and I was so busy rushing around and rushing by that I didn't even notice it there. I knew it was coming. I was waiting. And I didn't even stop to look behind the pillar. The package wasn't obvious, wasn't in my way getting in the front door, I didn't have to step over it, so in my perception it wasn't there. But it was.

I want to be loved. I think if only I were really loved I'd be happy. And in the past several days, I have received so much love from so many people that it amazes me that I didn't know it was already there. It didn't just come. Love doesn't work that way. I just finally slowed down enough to get what everyone has been trying to give me.

And I'm not the only one who lives on this wayward path. I suspect many of us do. I have an easy example, though. I know someone who got a great Christmas present. Several of them. All things that he really needed and would appreciate. He wondered why he got them. He fretted a bit about the overabundance, the expense, the mess. And yesterday, when he slowed down and experienced benefit from them, really saw them, the happiness that had been eluding him overflowed. There was over abundance, there was expense, there was mess. But there was something even greater that made all of those things no more than worthwhile challenges.

I can continue to push forward on this path, continue to see the things that aren't as I'd script them. Or I can choose to see the greatness in what I have. I choose happiness.