ASPIRE

We have been taught from the beginning to aspire, to desire, to covet, to crave, to hope for…things, position, power.  We have been told that aspiration is a prerequisite to success.  We have been led to believe that happiness comes from the attainment of our desires, our aspirations.

We have been taught and told wrong.

We aspire for what we do not have, what we perceive as necessary for our well-being and self-esteem.  If the aspiration is driven from within ourselves, then it is bred from a belief that we are incomplete.  And that belief is the source of psychological suffering.  If the aspiration is driven from without, rooted in a belief that we do not measure up to others, that we are not worthy because we do not meet social standards,  then it is an insatiable aspiration, for there are and will always be others who have more.  Either aspiration fixes our attention on what we don’t have rather than on what we do have. 

And the unassailable consequence is unhappiness.  Do we not see so many, including ourselves, who have so much yet are still unhappy?It is deprivation that flips the switch…for when we have less, and desire less, we value more what we do have, and that is the true root of happiness.

If man aspires to build a castle, he should do so not because he believes he cannot be happy without one, but because it is an expression of his recognition of the glorious and wondrous and beauteous everything he already has:  Life.