Tag Archives: Possessions

Now or Never

If not now, then when?

if not now then when jonathan hilton
The question that can launch a thousand ships

 

There is often something that we have meant to do in life we continually put off until tomorrow because of the potential consequences. Perhaps we are too busy, or maybe we are afraid of the price we pay, to do this thing. The fact that there is change involved and change is a scary thing because nobody really can guarantee you that whatever you are looking to do will, in fact, make your life experience all that much better.

This fear is enough to stop many adventurous people from pursuing a new adventure, but should it? Isn’t the point of life to stretch ourselves and create all that we are capable of?  Or is it just a game of accumulation, the one with the most possessions at the end wins?

The short answer, I believe,  is life is about growth, because you can have everything in the world and not achieve happiness, you can know that you are producing something unique, in a voice that no one else has, be totally broke and still be happy.  So if you look to stretch yourself, you have to ask yourself, if not now, then when?

All Great Things

Most of the great things that man has ever accomplished were created by taking a chance and changing the status quo.  In fact, there is really no place in your life that you can look

changes jonathan hilton
All change can be scary

that life hadn’t changed radically from their existence even fifty years ago.

Socially there was still legal segregation in the United States, and it was considered bad by the establishment to listen to Elvis. What would they think of Jay-Z or Katy Perry or the fact that the current president of the US is African-American?

Now with Technology

This is what a phone should look like!
This is what a phone should look like!

Technologically we have gone from the television being a new thing, with three channels, to a massive entertainment source that you can watch on your phone.  Speaking of phones, if you had told me that I would have my own Star Trek communicator that I carried around with me all the time, I would never have believed it.

The phone was attached to the wall, and you had to be home to use it.  Our current phones would really be science fiction.  What if Steve Jobs had said, “Not today world, we don’t need a cool hand-held phone that talks to you.” We would be lost completely.

These things never existed and never would have existed if it wasn’t for the fact that someone thought, if not now, then when?

Are You Living in the Moment?

So when it comes to your personal life, if not now, when? When you look at your life, and you see or even more significantly feel that something needs to change, it can be difficult to take the plunge.

live-in-the-moment-for-the-sheer-joy-ofMaybe you are hoping that things will change on their own, or you will feel differently tomorrow.  However, if you are always looking to tomorrow for things to get better or improve, you may be missing out on something, a great opportunity for happiness today.

 

Putting off your own happiness is not a good thing because you were not put on the Earth to be miserable with life.  Saying I will start being happy when the kids are grown, or after the autumnal equinox or when my next birthday comes, or some other random event you are resigning yourself to wait for.

This is a prime example of not living in the moment because I have said many times. There is no guarantee that you will be around until the next autumnal equinox or even until tomorrow, for that matter.  Today is all that there is, and now is the only time you are sure to have.  If you wait, it may well be too late.  It is OK to be afraid; everyone is afraid, but those who find success learn to deal with the fear and move forward anyway.

There will come the point in your life when you have to cross your Rubicon and challenge what you need to challenge, change what you need to change, or create what you need to create.  Then and only then will you be in control of your life and your decisions.

So if not now, when?

Letting Go

 

burningFire is an element that represents many things to many different people. To me, it has a symbol of purification. This is because when I looked into the fire, I saw the future ahead of me and the past was left behind.

The Significance of the Fire

There needs to be a bit more explanation than that I suppose.  In life, there are people who come into your life and cause only a ripple in the large tangle of life’s experience. Then there are those that are destined to leave a deep emotional crater, that you are destined to carry in your life.  How much and how long you carry it is up to you.

I started the fire for purification purposes. It needed to be done, a weeding out of cluttered possessions that served no purpose other than to remind me of things that were gone. As long as I held these things, there was the hope in the back of my mind that they would somehow summon those ghosts from the deathly slumber of their existence. It was time for a funeral, it was time for purification.

A Picture is Worth…………….

fire footage
Pictures burned as memories drift into the sky, never to be seen again.

The pyre I started was solely for me to observe and as the preparatory flames burned I said a silent goodbye and started to cleanse my existence of those memories. It was the pictures that went first.  Each happy moment of fake smiles and skin deep beauty were at first singed and then ever so slowly erased from existence.  As they went all of the lies, jealousy and foolishness went with them. Watching them go one by one was fascinating. Playing back entire years of events.  Then wiping them and their cursed impact away.  As the last fake image of yesterday disappeared into the either, candy swirled emotions of relief and fear engulfed me.

Possessions Mean Little to Me

campfireThen it was time for the things. Things that at one time held a vat of feelings and memories of special moments that will never be lived again. Knowing that there was a beauty in the world was great, but knowing that beauty can cut you deep and leave you with nothing but scars and disappointment. Onto the fire went the every single thing that had ever been given or held any attachment whatsoever.  Some of them burned well and caused the fire to burn ever higher.  Some did not, there was a bottle from a special occasion, that only the label disappeared in the wall of flame.

Your Words Showed Their Value

Eyes on FireLast and not least were the words. Words are empty when the emotions that once supported them. Now they are like the crack of a whip every time you read them and realize that they are no more. Let them go, place them in the fire.  Read one final time and destroyed forever.  That is the way of relationships that are born in the fire. They are often ended by the fire. How else could it possibly be?

The cleansing was over, the end had come. The fire went out, the past was gone with its last searing growing ember. Never to be mentioned again in conversation, but the scars remain, not only from the past but from the first moment I looked into the fire.

I Celebrate What I Do Have

Do you celebrate the things you do have?

celebrate-what-you-have Day 13 By Jon Hilton

It can be difficult in our society to really appreciate all that we do have today.  There is always another commercial that tells us what we should have, or how we should look, even though what we have and how we look is just fine.

 I think that I do currently celebrate the thing I do have, and not worry too much about the things I don’t have but it has not always been that way and it seems many other people have problems appreciating things as well.

The Culture of Want

This toy was really awesome, I used to wind it up and jump stuff, but it only made me happy until it broke.
This toy was really awesome, I used to wind it up and jump stuff, but it only made me happy until it broke.

From the time I was very young I can remember being bombarded and brainwashed with images on television which were designed to get me and my peers to desire products enough to scream until we started to get them.  From breakfast cereal made totally of sugar to toys that we couldn’t be happy without.   I was a child of the 70’s and that means that the marketing at the time was quite mild compared to today.

This was the manner in which the feeling of want was fostered in my generation.  It was built up even more as we grew older and became serious consumers. We needed to have certain things to be happy, and without those possessions happiness was going to elude us.  The biggest problem is that there is never a level where you have accumulated enough, you just see another level of consumption.

Captain Kirk was always a happy toy. Set your phasers to happiness and lets explore the galaxy!
Captain Kirk was always a happy toy. Set your phasers to happiness and lets explore the galaxy!

The young people of today are really the victims of a marketing in society which continually tells them not only what toys they need, but what clothes to wear, how their hair should look, and also what types of relationships they should desire.  The intended market is younger than you might imagine.  If you have young kids, watch television with them sometime, it is a non stop barrage of self esteem destroying marketing.

As for the adults of the world, you would think that after a while you would find a level of accumulating possessions where you would be able to sit back and say, “Wow, I have a massive amount of crap here, I am really happy.”

Yet you still do not feel happy, and corporate advertisers are happy about that, because they can start to sell you other things to fill the void and finally end your unhappiness. It is a fools journey, yet we all take it day after day.

Happiness Is Inside You All Along

happiness-comes-from-within-2I think that everyone eventually comes to the conclusion that happiness doesn’t come from things you buy.  There is always a feeling of happiness no matter how brief that accompanies buying a new thing.  Yet it also fades away quite quickly leaving you to wonder why you are not happy about the new car, Ipad, computer, or large screen television.

Real happiness can never come from things, ever. It is the lie of Madison Avenue that owning a certain product should make you feel a particular way.  No matter how many cars, houses, or electronic devices you own, if you are lacking appreciation for life on the inside there is going to be empty feelings of want and unhappiness left.

We actually put our happiness off by telling ourselves that when we own this or that then we will be able to feel happy.  When the choice to feel happy is really inside you each and every day during each and every moment.  All you have to do is notice it.

Appreciating Today

happinesswithin2Being able to celebrate what you do have is the path to happiness.  There are always going to be things that you don’t have.  Nobody can have it all.

 Yet you will always have exactly what you need at any given moment.  Appreciating what you have and the happiness that is with you right now at this second, seems to be the lightning rod that attracts more situations that make you feel this way.

  Look at the little things you have that make you happy, from the weather, to a cup of coffee in the morning. Whatever it is that makes you feel good appreciate it.  You will be surprised how many good things start showing up in your life to be appreciated.

Personally, I spent many years chasing the dream of owning all of my happiness.  Looking to the future and thinking when I get there I will be happy.  Only to find that there was always a new destination for happiness and it was always ahead of me.

 Now I think that I do appreciate the little things because they are in the here and now.  I have talked about my gratitude journal before and I mention it in passing again because I am grateful for the time each day that I spend being grateful for all that I do have. It is not magic but things seemed to clear up pretty well when I started feeling really grateful for what is in my life.  Rather than longing for, and feeling bad about what I did not have.  Or worse yet worrying about what might be taken away.

I do not know what “things” tomorrow will bring, but I do know that most likely they will be exactly what I need.  So I think I do celebrate what I do have.

 

Do you celebrate the things you do have?

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you’ll find, you get what you need.