Seeing is Believing; Believing is Achieving

My long awaited package arrived today. Inside were two books, one of which I’ve been waiting years for. I can remember finishing the book before this one. The tension I felt as the conflict in the story grew, the bitter disappointment as the book wound to a close but the story did not.

I frantically searched for the title of the next book determined that I would buy it immediately and devour the entire thing in one sitting. But it was not to be, no title or publication dates were forthcoming. Time went on, and for the first time in all my decades of reading, I tracked down the author’s website. From time to time, the author would provide updates. She would tease us here and there with stories of her progress.

Eventually there was a publication date!

And another and another before the book was finally released. Each time I eagerly awaited the book’s release and sighed when the date was changed. I even chose not to preorder at Amazon so I could make sure I had the book on the day it was released, but when the bookstore did not have the book when it should have been released, I decided to order it along with another book that my daughter needed for school.

As I said, the long awaited package came today!

When I got around to opening the package, I pulled out the second book, a beautifully illustrated copy of The Human Body: An Illustrated Guide to its Structure, Function and Disorders, instead. I was enthralled by the pictures and explanations – they even described a few surgical procedures! I showed it to my daughter and we talked before going on with our day.

The long overdue and eagerly awaited book didn’t reach my hands for hours later. When it did, I gave it a hug. I happily remembered the hours I spent with the one before it. I looked at the cover, read the acknowledgments and book flaps, and flipped to the last page to get a page count (697, in case you were wondering).
Then, without any qualms, doubts or hesitation, I decided the book would likely wait until Thanksgiving came along to read it. When all was said and done, I read one sentence of the story, and then pondered the ways I could use a well-written, descriptive book to teach writing.

Now before you write me off for showing such angst over a book only for it not to matter much when it arrived, ask yourself how many times and ways you’ve done the same thing.

We are always pursuing something in life. There is always some goal, object, possession or skill we feel as though we must have.

For some of these things, we tell ourselves, “we deserve it!” For others, the argument is made that our lives will be so much better when X happens. This is yet another case of “I’ll be happy when” which I posted about earlier.

How many people do you know who have gotten a degree and then never worked in that field, or hate the work they do now? How many times have you bought something or signed up for some program to never use the item or service in question? How many times have you longed for something only to find it wasn’t at all what you expected, or nearly as important as you previously thought?

We’ve all done this, consciously or unconsciously. This process steals our joy and power by placing them in something outside ourselves. It robs us of our ability to truly focus on the here and now and distorts our sense of what is and isn’t important.

Part of deciding to be happy, deciding to be conscious, is fully accepting the here and now, even while we work to change it. It requires that we keep our mind’s eye trained on our vision, but our eyes on our current situation.

In this way we protect our health, relationships, sense of self and true priorities while we increase our earning potential, learn a new skill, start a business or any other time consuming venture that could allow us to lose focus.

After all, what would finally reaching our goal or receiving our desired object mean if we’ve sacrificed more essential, but often taken for granted, priorities?

P.S.
For anyone who happens to be wondering… the book in question is The High King’s Tomb by Kristen Britain.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 2:55 am and is filed under Happiness, Inner Peace, Life, Motivation, Success, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.