We all want it and many of us spend our entire lives looking for it.  Happiness, the elusive entity that tells us we are all good on the inside.  We are in love with life and life is in love with us.  It appears it would be easy to find if we only had enough.  If we only had enough money, enough family, enough trips, enough adventure, enough material goods, a bigger house.  You name it, if we only had enough finally we would be happy.

We may feel it that nagging little feeling telling us that something is missing.  We search outside for just the thing that will do it.  We fail or refuse to look inside.  Many of us fail to realize that what we are searching for lies within us.  Of course a huge windfall of cash, the house we have always wanted, the fancy car or the exotic trips will bring us momentary joy but with time the joy lessens.  The trip is over, the house needs repairs and the cash is spent many times wondering what happened.  We see it on tv.  We watch others around us laughing, smiling, enjoying and we wonder what we are doing wrong.

We in our civilized modern world are working longer and harder yet many fall further behind.  We grasp for our gold as our children flounder and we wonder why our relationships are crumbling.  As an ex hospice nurse, I have spent countless hours at the bedside of the dying.  They often speak of regret, what they wished they had done.  I cannot recall anyone telling me they wished they had made more or owned more.  The major themes were related to relationships.  Many wished they had spent more time or showed more interest in loved ones.  They also spoke of wishing they had not been so serious or afraid of life.  One man simply said “I wish I had said I am sorry more.”  In our busy world, we tend to forget, we take others for granted.  We believe when we finally have what we need or want then we will have time to tend to those left on the back burner.  Unfortunately, in life there are no guarantees and what we ignore today may not be there tomorrow.   Material wealth can never fill an empty soul or an empty heart.  Take care.

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