Hello Deedge!

I read your post and wasn’t sure what to say. Left to do other things, thought about other things, and then all of a sudden, for some odd reason, these thoughts came to me. You say that you’re not sure what to say to another person in the same situation, as you’ve become blind to the possible solutions. What if we were to change the object from work and photography to a person, to a relationship? What if someone said that they could only be happy if they were with someone, and for some reason they kept failing at relationships? Do you think they were destined to be unhappy forever? Rhetorical questions, you don’t have to respond 🙂

You give a lot of power to external events, people, even objects, and subsequently become a victim with no power over their own destiny. I don’t know much about karma and I’m not that certain about laws of attraction, but I have noticed in my own life, that the more attached I am to something, the more likely it is that I will lose it at some point. Or perhaps I constantly lose other things as well, but I don’t notice them. In things that do not matter that much to me, I seem to be really lucky in life. Things happen with ease. I don’t know why it works that way, but I have learned not to be so attached to things and events, and to not give away my power. I am an autonomous being amongst other autonomous beings.

Currently, I see joy as something that’s spontaneous. It is my response to a thought or experience. Or sometimes I just allow it to come to me, even if I were to be in the most mundane setting. Just by focusing on all my senses and how great it is to be able to feel and experience things vividly. But if you were to force joy to stay with you permanently or expected a particular thing to constantly give you joy? Kind of like holding a butterfly in your hand so tightly that it would die.

You can decide to enjoy your living immediately, if you want to. There’s no need to wait for the perfect setting, the perfect job, the perfect relationship. You have the ability to feel joy and to feel that you are alive. You don’t have to look at your camera and think “I wish you would work, so that I could finally enjoy life and be happy”. Life unfolds all the time, and there is beauty in all kinds of situations, if you wish to see it. There is beauty even in pain and sadness; human life can be so vivid and fragile in the same time. I know we are so used to numbing ourselves, because there is so much of everything happening, that it can be overwhelming. I guess that’s why it feels so good to really be present and open all the senses and experience life as it happens.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by The Ruminant.