Why Living a Life You’re Proud of Now is Better than Living a Life You Will Love Later

Time to Re-evaluate What Makes you Happy

There isn’t a day we don’t come across the phrase “Aim high, and you will make it,” which encourages us to chase our biggest dreams and pursue our wildest goals. It feeds the feeling that all your hard work will eventually lead you to the point of satisfaction. The point when you will lay your hat on the rack and say: I did it. I can rest now.

But rarely do we seem to want to talk about the aftermath of having achieved our desire.

Did I buy that item? Yes.

Did I land that job? Yes.

Did I travel around the world? Yes.

And so on. Then comes the final question you face, which most people ask themselves daily but fail to give enough attention to.

Am I happy? Well, I mean, I am. Or, I should be, since I achieved everything I could ask for. Why shouldn’t I be happy?

We like to think that we are happy because we have experienced everything we have been seeking to experience ever since we can remember. But, give yourself an amount of time following the date of your last achievement, and you will feel yourself contracting a sense of emptiness. The same emptiness that filled you before you achieved anything.

How, though, can one feel so empty when they’ve accomplished so much? Well, think about the people you know who seem to be in a position of having achieved their goals. Are they happy?

The Uncertainty of Happiness

No one can define what will make you happy, not even yourself.

When we live in a society that chases the destination rather than the journey of getting to it, we often find it hard to define what truly makes us happy. Sure, we may know where we would like to see ourselves in 5 years; the life we believe is ideal for us. All it takes is a couple of steps to follow and we will get there.

And say we got there. What happens now? We’re taking part in this new form of life, experiencing every day the same as the last, and slowly growing tired of our new reality. We are fed up with the new routine we once deemed as our wildest fantasy. What happened to the promise we’d made to ourselves to view life from a different angle once we achieved this new lifestyle?

Well, nothing. Our promise remains as just a promise because it can never be met, not in life which we can’t stop wanting to gain more out of. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s in our nature to want to keep learning, experiencing, and growing. It’s just that we often forget about it when we are too focused on following a particular vision which we think will fulfill us once we’ve lived it.

The Source of Our Motivation

Very often I ask myself what I’m chasing. What is my goal? Well, the truth of the matter is, the longer I live life, the more goals I seem to accumulate, to a point where I can openly say I don’t know.

In a life that doesn’t guarantee what the next minute will bring, we depend on the presence of the future too much, thinking it holds all the answers as long as we put in the effort to get there. Our focus from the present is completely robbed by the uncertain promise of tomorrow.

Eastern Philosophy maintains that we need to live in the present; the now, and that ultimately, there is no other time than now. As you read this, you have the potential to switch aspects of your life which you may think requires the coming of tomorrow, or the next 10 years, that allow you to do so. Only tomorrow may never even come.

If you switch the focus of your motivation from a destination in the future to your journey in the present; where you’re positioned, what you’re doing with your time, and what you’re gaining out of your experience of being alive, you forget about the existence of a goal in the future and look forward to your goal right now.

What is filling you with happiness as we speak? Try to appreciate whatever it may be, because it will most likely change as your journey progresses.

Individual Standards Means Individual Definitions

Given that everyone follows their own journey, we are naturally at a different point in our individual paths. Any comparisons with achievements by other people would be equivalent to comparing water with fire. We serve different purposes and experience life through different perspectives. Our standards differ from person to person, according to their position in life.

In a competitive world, we like to think that happiness is defined by what we would like to incorporate into our lives at a given stage.

But when we ask the deeper question of what truly fills us with purpose, it could simply involve following principles, such as honesty, compassion, modesty, or creativity. For others, it may be as simple as sharing a meal with someone else. While others might find the answer they’ve been looking for in raising a family, or exploring more of the world; all things that appear as aspects of one’s day-to-day life but which are the source of their happiness. Happiness stemming from the present.

“The time is now, the person is you.” — Nido R. Qubein.

What if We Chose to Be Happy Now?

I always like to imagine how different I’d react to life if I was told I only had a day to define it. If I had nothing but the present to truly sit down and reflect on everything I have experienced and am experiencing right now. Surely I’d be in a hurry to think about everything that has made me happy so far and seek to experience as much of life until the sun sets.

But in a life that has proven to comprise more than just a day, we are given a new chance to make ourselves happy every time we wake up. A chance that doesn’t require us to focus on the happiness to be achieved by the following days, but by the time we are given now.

Time is precious, and so is our experience of life, which will never stop for as long as we keep learning and growing. We don’t need to look forward to experiencing it, for we are experiencing it already.

Angelina Der Arakelian