” Are you happy with what you have in life?” This is one question asked of me the most. Well, I have a stable career, I am debt free, financially independent and get to travel the world for the past 25 years to more than 50 countries, so for sure my answer is a ‘yes”. Why wouldn’t I be happy and what more anyone can ask for? But like many others, I often forget that life isn’t just about my current state of being, but rather a process filled with changes. It is precisely those changes we experienced that we find fulfillments in life. Imagine that we are perfectly happy all the time and have everything that we wanted without any worries and therefore it doesn’t involve any changes, our lives would be very boring and there will be nothing to look forward to because we are already happy and living a perfect life as always. We would have no sense of appreciation and no desires to do anything to be better. Would I want that kind of life?
The essence of living life is to experience changes and often we want to make changes for the better. Human beings are intellectual equipped with very sophisticated mind providing us with the power to make choices and ultimately we assume the responsibilities of our own actions. We learn from making bad choices and appreciate when we make the wise ones. Changes in life such as making good progress to repairing a bad relationships so you can look forward to a better one in the near future, or making a good effort in searching for a career that you have always wanted. All of these changes make you a better person and fulfilling the meanings and purposes you have created for yourself. This is far better than just having all of the perfectness planted in you on day one and you never have to work for it, then life would be dull and unfulfilling. Looking back at my own path of life, I turned from being a miserable child to a low self-esteem adolescence, then to an early adulthood filled with cloudiness, a lost soul drifting all alone in the big ocean and finally into a confident, a very deterministic and a self sufficient grown man. While most of my life isn’t about being happy and perfect, I appreciate where I am today due to all the changes which shaped my life and that is precious to me.
So the right question to ask is ” Do you find fulfillment in your life?” We all live different lives but we try our best to make good choices so that life can be fulfilling. If you have the desire to care about people and make the world a better place for everyone to live, then your life is definitely fulfilling and appreciative. Isn’t this much better than just being 100% happy all the time without any fulfillment? For me, I prefer changes in life and changing for the better because I want to make good progress and in turn, I find the real happiness not given to me for free, but is something I have the desire to work towards it. It is more meaningful and inspirational to me. It is precisely that inspiration which drives all of us to be the best we can be while living this unpredictable and limited life that we do.
In conclusion, I much rather choose inspirations over happiness for the latter cannot be appreciated without inspirations. Life is challenging all the time, changing all the time and it is up to us on how to live it. I have much to change and experience in the near future with my life and not knowing what is heading my way, I anticipate it will be something even better than my current state of being. In either way, I need to work for it and have the desire to make progress. To impress people is easy by just telling them all of your victories. But to inspire people, you have to tell them about your defeats. I did evolve a lot in my path of life and it isn’t always successful and happy, I much prefer having lots of interesting stories to tell people when I am near the end of my life.