Day 135: Chasing A Beautiful Life
Everyone in this world - those living, those who has lived and those who have yet to live - all desire to have a beautiful life. We want to live a life that is magnificent and amazing and filled with joy. It is a universal longing that goes without saying. We have our dreams, but this is more than a dream. This is a desire to have everything we do and experience be beautiful. We desire beauty.
I know I have had this desire. The life I want to be living is one filled with beauty where I can look at any situation and smile because even in the darkest of times there can still be magic. I want to look at the life I am living and let out a happy sign because it is one of joy and laughter and all things wonderful. Don't we all want this to be our lives?
Because we all want this live filled with beauty, we all have an idea of what that life would look like. It is a version of our situation that is filled with magic and often so completely different from the situations we are currently in. Even though each person has a different version of this "perfect life" we all have a version. It hangs in our mind as a reminder of all that we do not have and all that we could have if we could only catch it.
No matter what this version looks like to us, it haunts our days and steal away our contentment. We picture what living should look like and we are disappointed when it does not look that specific way. So we strive after that perfect vision of that perfect life with everything in us. This idea of what beauty looks like consumes us until that is all we want and we are no longer happy with anything but that.
From there everything becomes a stepping stone towards that perfect life. Living is not longer about experiencing and enjoying, it becomes about striving and reaching. There is nothing wrong with striving towards your dreams and desires, but this longing is different. Chasing after it creates a discomfort with our days and our happiness. We ignore the present with the hopes of creating the perfect future.
Only when we reach that desired future will be be happy, only then we will see the beauty and then we will be living the life we want to live. We begin to believe we can only be content with living when we reach that future. Instead of living we being striving. The more we strive after this mental image the less joy we find in our everyday moments. The more we chase the less beauty we will see in the world around us. All because we believe those things can only be found when we reach that perfect version.
We have to be so cautious in this striving. We can always improve the life we are living and there can always be room for more joy and more beauty. There must be this realization that they do not only exist in this version of life we long for. When we believe the only thing that will make us happy is that future, we need to take a serious step back and recognize the place we have just found ourselves in.
When we cling to this vision we forget so many key areas of life. Instead of seeing, we are seeking. Instead of receiving, we are reaching. We become consumed by striving after something we believe is absent from our lives. But is it really absent? Do you truly have no joy or beauty or laughter or adventure in your life? Or are you simply chasing after something that is around you this very second?
This perfect life becomes a craving, but in this craving we forget. We forget that life will never be perfect and the more we chase this skewed perception of what it could be the more we lose sight of everything that is around us. We are living an incredibly beautiful life, every day. There is so much to be joyful about and there is so much amazement to be found if we only looked up for long enough to see it.
We all crave this beautiful life, but we forget to look around at the life we are living. How beautiful it truly is.
Until Next Time,
Lillian Merritt
(Pursuit)
Brilliant hues explode throughout the sky above and paint the world in a magnificent light while the breeze drifts lazily by. And still there is striving, chasing, and reaching after the beauty that flits away on weightless wings, nothing seems as impossible as the prospects of catching that which is being sought after.