Milestone Not Just A Stepping Stone

There is a moment in life when we begin to hurry through the process. We anxiously start to just want to get things over with. The list of things we can't be bothered with includes weddings, divorces,  graduations, promotions, publications, birthday cakes, learning a new language, learning a new name at the office, family reunions, even funerals. I am not sure when this moment occurs exactly when we want to be on to the next thing, while we are still deeply entrenched in a current moment, but it happens often to many of us and often becomes the source for our discontentment. 

A rich man is not rich if he is unhappy. The reward of life is truly in being content. Having a good spirit, a good mind, a good heart is profoundly more important than a big bank account and that is what we all forget. 

Once upon a time i wasn't worried about money. I wasn't money conscious. Some say if you are not money conscious you will never achieve a fortune, but since I have become money conscious, I have become not only financially poor, but poor of spirit. Ignorance is bliss. We strive for success, but not for holistic health. 

Though my beBee articles,  are often thoughtful, they are deeply rooted in the pursuit of money and at what cost to me or the people reading them. I am always disappointed i haven't climbed some mountain men have died climbing, which is a ridiculous and a true notion of me. The only thing I am actually equipped to give advice on is perseverance. 

Now, this desire to achieve that I have developed, has to be psychologically rooted in childhood rejection. It has to come from a feeling of not being good enough, because if i stayed right where I am today and never entered another career, all I have done should be enough to validate myself and feel deserving of love and respect. I see people older than me with less, so why shouldn't it be enough. I am living on my own. I enjoy my work though it's not my dream job.  I am not on welfare. I am educated. I have traveled. I have performed on stages. I've helped some people. I have been published under various aliases. I am accomplished in my own right, especially for coming from a somewhat bizarre background.

 In a traditional since, I am accomplished just being the first in my family to graduate college and make the Dean's list and getting a decent job should have been enough for me and my family to be PROUD. I think it all went wrong because in my life nobody every congratulated me or said good job. I was always sort of mocked for anything good I did. People were always saying she thinks she's better than us, and those were never my words. I didn't want to get pushed outside of the groups I was in. I was sort of ostracized for having what I would consider normal success, graduating high-school, graduating college, not having a record. Once a woman did congratulate me for not being pregnant because that was so rare for girls in my community. 

I tried so hard to accomplish goals, i left bridges burned. My feet were so hot and all I was doing was running to a golden statue I could never take back with me. I realize I don't need to strive anymore, but it's so ingrained in me I am not sure I will ever be able to accept my life or who I have become. I want to learn to relax. I want to be proud of the little things. I don't want the glory to fade so fast, when I achieve my goals. The glory of being in China is starting to fade. It should still be fresh and Invigorating. I haven't been here a full month. This glory of being in China I want to feel it deeply because I worked very hard to get back here and every day I want to marvel at being in the the Dragon Land. I want to be reliable, practical and beautifully content. 

When we don't want to be here today, but we want to be somewhere tomorrow or four months from now,, we have to reevaluate our perception of life. Life is not goal setting contrary to popular belief, the Lyon Brave Method, or the business geared articles on beBee that we see on a daily basis. 

Many great philosophers and story tellers have written about the importance of living in the NOW. I must admit my greatest flaw is I am always on to the next step. This allows me to miss out on much opportunity presently around me in current times, like friendship and even love. Living in the future is living in a world that does not exist and it makes it easy for me to exclude the people around who reach out to me in abundance, because if I am in America I imagine they won't be in China, so why bother and if I am in China,  I imagine they won't be in Africa, so why bother. I need to bother because i need love now, not in the future and because I can have friends all over the world. The sad thing is I often feel lonely, and it is not because potential friends aren't all around me, it's because I am closed off to them. I have some real changes to make about how I approach LIFE here in China.

I must admit I live in the future often and this hurts my life and the people around me as it causes me to be a rather aloof and detached individual. In many ways this future projection of myself has kept me alive, but it has also kept me one step behind myself. See by hurrying through the process it is likely I am not gaining everything I should from my present circumstances. If life is our teacher we need to focus everyday on what's around us. It's like I am sleeping through calculus and surprised I'm getting a C in it.  See being in the future and not with your kids or your wife, or at work is the equivalent of daydreaming in school. Your daydreams hurt your grades. I am daydreaming through life and it is hurting me. Thus, repeating a scenario occurs often in my life, leading to time lost and not gained and mediocre grades IN MY LIFE. 

If life were building a house, would you want to work with someone who was unhurried, meticulous and exacting, or a person who was excited,  a big dreamer spontaneous, energetic and perhaps reckless. 

I used to love this quote i found in a fortune cookie. It said, "he who hurries cannot walk with dignity." I laminated that quote and wore it around my neck in a locket, which means I found that to be profound advice, yet I didn't take it. I hurried through life and I was always on to the next adventuer. I will be the first to admit, my brave and daring ways have led to a fall from grace and it's been hard to get back up. 

Some risks I should not have taken. For example, the first time I was in China I left my contract early in pursuit of a better city and more money. The company that hired me was careless about my visa and let me go when it expired as easily as I left my former company to join them. If I would have stayed with my previous company I would probably be fluent in Chinese and financially stable. Now, I am doing it over. I am in a city that is not expat friendly. My gut instinct wants to head to Shanghai or Shenzhen, but my gut instinct is wrong. based on emotion and whim. It is my intellect and life experiences that has taught me to WAIT patiently before seeking out a new opportunity and to honor the contract I have signed. Another favorite quote of mine is, "he who acts in haste makes waste."

Anyways I leave you with this quote, "The moment we are living in is not a stepping stone to something better. It is exactly wonderful, and we have already arrived at the perfect moment. "