89. You can wait for happiness or be happy, even without a partner

[I’ve been on another project so that’s why my articles stopped for awhile. Thanks for your patience. - Chuck]

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who’s husband had died five years. “We worked hard all our lives and we were looking forward to retirement so we could do some traveling and enjoy things together. But then he died before that time came and we never got to do it. I wish we hadn’t waited,” she said.

Waiting to really live didn’t pay off. They postponed living, always expecting the future would be better than it is now. “When we retire...” they said. But how many single people do the same thing – postpone happiness while they wait for the right mate. “When I find the right partner......then I’ll be happy.” So they wait for a happiness that can never come in the future because living is only now, in this moment. The future is always a projected Now, and the mind’s shenanigans will always make it look better than this Now.

So as we wait for that future happiness we remain miserable, lonely, always longing. There’s another way. Why not learn to look into this moment and its joys, to be grateful and happy for this moment, the only moment you’re living anyway? Why argue with this moment by thinking it’s not good enough and some future will be better? Why not, instead, accept this moment and be happy now? Chances are good you’d be a lot more attractive person to a potential mate if you were happy now instead of always having some part of you tied up with the longing and the aching for that perfect Mr. or Ms. Right.

I’ve said for a long time that having another partner would be frosting on the cake. But I have to be my own cake. When you’re the cake instead of looking for someone else to be the cake for you, you’re free. Free from the longing. Free from needing someone, which leads to clinging and jealousy, the very behavior that’ll push a potential mate away. Living now is simply being present to life as it is.

Waiting is another way to say you’ve stopped living. You’re not enjoying the moment, just going through the motions while that nagging negativity runs in the background, coloring every aspect of your life. We don’t seem to notice that any “future” we dreamed of – that now has come and gone – never made life better for more than a very short time.

Take a look at your whole life. Look at all the things in the past that you thought were going to make you happy – getting a new car, house, husband, or getting the kids out of the house, getting rid of a mate, dating that right guy or gal. Did any of those things bring you lasting happiness? “No,” you say, “but give me another few months and they will, this time.”

Meantime, what you’re doing is called existing. It’s not living. That existing has no passion, no flair, no zest, no presence to it. You’re going through the motions of life but not really living. And you know it. You don’t have to look very deep inside to say, “Yes, my life is just a dull sameness. No matter what activity I’m involved with there’s always that undercurrent of nagging unhappiness and misery.” There’s no freshness in that, no taste of joy, it’s just existing, in a constant state of unhappiness and misery. Not a piercing pain, just a dull sense of unease that can be so subtle you even mask it from yourself.

It’s easy to know when you’re living only for the future. How? You can feel it. It’s that gnawing feeling of loneliness, sadness, despair, even mild or sometimes major panic: “This isn’t good enough. This isn’t the way I’d planned it. Life isn’t going the way I wanted. I have to work harder, be better, figure out more ways to be attractive? Then, I’ll find the right person and then I’ll be happy!”

What about being happy now? What about noticing all the things you have to be grateful for now, and living in that? What about just living in this moment, being fully present to what is? Is it really true that a new partner would make life better? Can you know that for sure? Reality is that it’s just not meant to be for you right now. You know that because it’s the way it is. Deal with reality and not your “little me” desires and fantasies and you may notice that life is good already.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer