[citychick]

May 13, 2008.

You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.

Your sense of what will bring you happiness is so crude and blundering. Try something else as a compass. Maybe the moralists are right and happiness doesn’t come from seeking pleasure and ease.

-Joanna Field


We think we know what will make us happy. Seldom do we readily accept that painful moments are often the price tags for peaceful, happy times. Nor do we appreciate that happiness lives within each one us; never is it intrinsic to the events we experience. Because we look for happiness “out there’ and expect it gift-wrapped in a particular way, we miss the joy of being fully alive each passing moment. How distorted our sense of happiness was before finding our way to this program! How futile our search!

The way still isn’t easy every Step we take, but we will find happiness in those fleeting moments when we can get outside of ourselves long enough to be fully attentive to the people in our lives. We’ll find it because it’s been there all the time. It flows between us when we open our hearts to give and receive compassion. Being truly there for another person is the key which unlocks the gate holding happiness back.

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I will let someone in today and feel the rush of happiness.