Are you caught up in "seeking"?.

I was texting with a friend a while ago, and during the conversation I said " I don't know, I just always think there should be more". Her response:" Be happy my friend, in the moment. That's all we have. We might not get a chance to have more".  Wise woman.

I have struggled with this all my life. I love setting and achieving goals. Thinking there should be more. The excitement when you set a goal all the way up to the endorphins when you complete it when you get there.  But where is "there" exactly?  I just happened to put on a podcast not long ago that was described exactly what I had been feeling. It was discussing seeking as a state of mind. That we are looking for something outside of ourselves to fill us up, that the next thing will make us whole and complete. 

I am not well versed in philosophy but this is interesting to me. The idea is that as we are seeking, we are coming at things with a different energy. An energy of deficiency or urgency, that if we don't get it or achieve it we are failures. The reality is that we are ALL already whole and complete. The trick is honoring that and appreciating where we are in the moment, and that's HARD.

“When someone seeks,” said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”

For someone who has always valued "control", I find this concept a little scary. The idea that finding means "being free, being open, having no goal" seems like a foreign language to me. But, what if, in my quest to achieve I am missing out on things along the way that would actually be more fulfilling than the end goal? If we look at addictions: food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling- we are using all these things to try to fill a void. The emptiness never really goes away, it is just covered up by the next goal or challenge.

"When we desire something, we fixate on it. We commit our time and our mental energy, and in the process, we develop a one-sided obsession that leads to misery any time reality doesn’t correspond. "Happiness — or more accurately, a lack of unhappiness — is a product of the relationship that exists between our subjective expectations and the objective reality. Over the long-term, a feeling of peaceful contentment comes down to the objective reality giving us more than our subjective expectations.

So where does this leave me? Not sure. But I know 2 things for sure

1. Inner work is never done

2. We all need that friend in our corner who will show us another perspective when ours gets a little fuzzy

I would love to hear your thoughts on "seeking" and goals now that we have started a new year and everyone and their sister seems to have embarked on a "New Year, New You" journey.