The Journey

I recently made an unexpected connection between happiness and the end of hope. I am aware that the message I am about to convey here is not a popular one. However, I believe it is one worth looking at and considering.

A short time ago, I had a sudden realization that something I had long been holding out hope for would never come to be. By this I mean, in fact, my oldest and dearest hopes and dreams, to which I had been clinging tightly since my childhood and which have changed forms and morphed several times throughout my lifetime but have ultimately stayed the same in content for these 33 years, all came crashing down in the rise of a definite reality: They would never, ever come true. Not in this lifetime, this incarnation, or this world.

Emotional devastation lay in the wake of this unavoidable truth. All that I had consciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously worked and waited for was finally known to be for nothing. Dramatic as this may sound, it is not an exaggeration. The fact is, I had NO idea just how driven my every earthly waking moment had been by this long-held hope, and dare I say, expectation? I had no awareness of how it impacted every action, every choice, and every decision I made for all these years. The hope of this precious future was needling away at my mind and my consciousness when I brushed my teeth in the morning, when I picked out clothes to wear, when I sat on the couch watching tv, and in the midst of every human interaction I had. What an unbelievable revelation!

The devastation had its way with me for a couple of weeks (weeks!) before I was able to choose to see it clearly. When, at last, I did, this is what I learned:

• The hope to which I had been holding all this time had actually kept me living perpetually in the future. Due to this endless hope, I was never able to be fully, completely, and uninhibitedly in the present moment. How could I be contented in the present moment, with all its reality and its flaws, when this idealistic “one day” forever hung in the future, just out of reach? Ultimate lesson: THIS is all there is or will ever be. Right here, right now, just this.

• The reason the loss of hope was so devastating was because I had, along the way, tied my very happiness to this hope. So now, not only could I not BE in the present moment (where happiness actually exists), but I could never be fully, truly, and completely happy until my hopes and dreams had been fulfilled. With the sudden realization that they would never be fulfilled, it seemed as if, then, my happiness would never be complete. I had inadvertently tied my happiness to a “thing,” which was in the future, and since I would never achieve that “thing,” I was doomed to not be happy. Ultimate lesson: Oh yeah, “things” can’t make you happy–in ANY form.

• Without this endless hope and forever-future dream, there was suddenly nothing to strive for, nothing to achieve, and no one to be. This awareness is only disappointing and bleak when you have tied your happiness to achievements, accomplishments, and “being someone.” But when you choose to see it clearly, you discover that in fact, this realization brings something else with it altogether: RELIEF! And oh! what a relief it is! Without the constant striving, yearning, and working to do and be and have something else beyond what is here right now in the present moment…there is the complete freedom and LIBERATION to just Be, as you are, with the acceptance that it is perfection. Ultimate lesson: There is total relaxation, liberation and true happiness in the acceptance of what is (the present moment). / All striving, hoping and future-forecasting is resistance to what is (the present moment) and results in fear, anxiety, and unhappiness.

This realization has been a game-changer for me. It has literally changed my life and the way I live it. Having released the faulty belief that my happiness was tied to the accomplishment of my hopes and dreams, I can now just revel in the relief of this discovery, this letting go. Without my great hopes forever looming in my consciousness, I find a great deal of freedom, space, and time in my life. There is now nothing I “have to do,” or even greater perhaps, nothing I have to prove, to myself or anyone else.

My life looks a lot different today than it did just a month or so ago. Maybe not to the next door neighbors, or my coworkers, or to the naked eye at all. But for me, everything has changed, from the inside out. I can now go to my job without resenting it for holding me back from some greater future or better option. I can sit around all day on the couch if I want without the sense of failure or vague dissatisfaction from not having accomplished anything to propel me closer to achieving my hopes. In fact, I can do anything, or nothing at all, and be contented and satisfied, every time I remember that I have nothing to do and no one to be. Without the need to achieve, accomplish, and be something (or somewhere) other than THIS, there is actually no concept of failure at all. Talk about a relief!

The pressure is off, at last, and in the loss of hope, I found a much greater freedom. In the loss of hope, I found peace. In the loss of hope, I found acceptance, both of myself and of what is. In the loss of hope, I found deep release and, for the first time in my life, contentment. In the loss of my persistent hopes and dreams, I found the here and now, and as it turns out, this present moment is not so bad after all.