Seeing Life

Everyday I see people with the same face; a flat, expressionless face. Their eyes see nothing. None of them notice me; they are all focused on where they have to be, and what they have to do. It seems to me that none of them are happy because they don't have time to be.

In the United States we learn from a young age that being successful is the main objective in life. Being successful is also synonymous with having status. How come being happy is not the objective? How come we assume that being successful goes hand in hand with being happy? Because it does not. Those people that we deem so successful seem unhappy. When you see them on T.V. you see worry and anxiety. In fact, they seem constantly in stress. Why is this? And why is this side affect of being successful not important? 

We also learn that to be successful you have to set goals. We are taught to set goals in every aspect of our lives, for everyday of every week of every year. Every minute that we are alive we have a goal we must achieve in order to be successful. Yet, when one becomes successful, there are still things to be had, and goals to set. We are never done making goals, and we are never truly living. Being alive is not working to get what you want, it's realizing what you already have. It is noticing the world around you and not the world you want to live in. When we set goals for something we want, we no longer notice what is around us, or what we have, because we become obsessed with rushing towards that goal. Our choices are now in pursuit of that goal; everything we do is now in pursuit of that goal. Once this happens, we are not living anymore. We are those people that I described above, the expressionless, flat faced people. We see nothing, but our end goal. 

All those successful people that we long to be are not all that successful because they are not content. In fact, they have a hunger that will never be satisfied. They have had a taste of what it is like to attain your biggest dreams, and they now feel that the next goal is also accomplishable. This a vicious cycle that will never end until they realize that what they have is also what they always wanted. They also have more things to lose, and therefore more things to be worried about.

Always in a rush to succeed by accomplishing our goals, we don't enjoy the moment. The key is not to not have dreams. The key is to enjoy the process of getting to your dreams and not to always be in "need" of something. To notice what is going on around you and not become so preoccupied by what you have to do that you forget to live. Don't hurry through life so that you can get the thing you want. You wont be happy if you're always in a haste to have the next thing you desire. Remember that we can't see or live once we are dominated by what we want.