Remember those little cartoons called “Happiness Is?” What happened to them? Were they just too ordinary to survive mass media notions of what happiness is in the world of consumerism? Maybe. They were, after all, simple and ordinary, reminding us of how to find happiness in simple and ordinary things.
It’s a very ordinary human condition not to be happy, but our natural human condition is to be happy. Why is there such a split? We often say “I’m pretty happy but I would be happier if …” We never seem to reach our fullest potential. We look towards it and we believe it lies in the future. But if we are not living our fullest potential now—as we could be in this moment—will we ever be in our fullest potential? When will we be happy if our fullest potential is in the future? It will always be ahead of us, like the carrot in front of the donkey, enticing the donkey to move along. Though we are not as simple as a donkey, we do react in the same way when desire is put in front of us. We strive towards that desire as if it is the answer to our happiness.
As humans, we sometimes reach the carrot. We enjoy and experience the happiness for those few moments that we gained and consumed the object of our desire. When the carrot is gone, unhappiness sets in again because we ache for the next carrot. We’re trained to believe that we have to strive for something to move in life. We always have to go further, have more, and be better. That kind of thinking pushes our true happiness and our true potential in front of us all the time.
My teacher says; “We are both ordinary and extraordinary people.” I love that perspective. It gives me permission to be ordinary. What a relief. I thought it was only me who was hurting to be accepted as my ordinary self.
Being ordinary is what brings us everyday happiness. Being extraordinary is what we go out in the world to do, how we bring about results and solutions, but we cannot be one without the other. We cannot be whole human beings. We cannot be happy and content with what is—the ordinary and the simple—and go out in the world to be our extraordinary self also.
Our simple everyday needs must be heard and met.
