A while back I ran into an old friend at the airport. Since we were waiting for the same flight, we got to talking. It turned into a most interesting conversation.
John Cali
Ann (not her real name) has a high-profile job. Highly paid too. She’s been very successful in her chosen profession for all her adult life. In her work she gets to travel all over the world to places most folks only dream about.
Ann and her husband are happily married and have a successful business, which he runs since she’s gone so much. But she helps out when she’s home.
They have two beautiful children whom they adore, a comfortable home, and all the money they’ll ever want or need.
Does that sound like a prescription for happiness? Maybe not.
As Ann and I were talking, I mentioned the recent sudden death of one of her colleagues. She shrugged her shoulders and a grim look came over her pretty face.
“Well,” she said, “you never know. One day you’re here, the next day you’re gone.”
As we continued chatting, it became obvious Ann saw life as something we just struggle through only to finish up at a dead-end. Literally.
The grim look on her face matched her even grimmer outlook on life.
The joy of life had escaped Ann almost completely.
Here’s Spirit.
Spirit
We see so many humans merely surviving, struggling, from one day to the next, hoping desperately nothing goes wrong, but half-expecting it to.
John’s friend Ann is not unusual among you. And it has little to do with how much money you have, what kind of home you live in, even your relationships with others.
But it has everything to do with your relationship with yourselves. It all begins and ends there.
Many folks we observe either have a difficult relationship with themselves, or they simply neglect that relationship. That, friends, is a prescription for a joyless life.
People like Ann are very good at making money, maintaining stable marriages, raising children, etc. They often invest all their “emotional currency,” if you will, in those things. Yet, at the end of the day, they feel empty and lost. They know something’s missing, but have no idea what it is.
Your relationship with yourselves, and the nurturing of that relationship, is the missing element. Without it, you have nothing. With it, you can have everything.
When you take time to nurture yourselves — in whatever ways feel good (meditating, exercising, eating healthy, spending time in nature, etc.) — you will reconnect with your source, with God, with your higher selves.
Your higher selves, friends, are eternally joyful. They want you, the human aspects of themselves, to also be joyful.
But you’re not likely to find much joy in your physical lives if you ignore your spiritual aspects.
You must put yourselves first. You must remember who you are, spirit in human form. Then you will find a joy that will seldom leave you. It won’t matter what’s going on in the world around you, or with the other people around you.
In nearly every waking moment you will know the joy of your higher selves. And if you temporarily get “knocked out of” your joy, you will know how to quickly regain it.
Joy is the real key to all you search for. It’s all that matters.
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