Happiness is NOW! It isn't tomorrow. It isn't yesterday. Happiness is like a morning glory: Yesterday's won't bloom again; tomorrow's hasn't opened yet. Only today's flower can be enjoyed today. Be happy this very moment, and you'll learn how to be happy always.
Your tomorrow has no right to complain about your today, as long as your today gives you a bliss, unknown and incomprehensible to both your yesterday, and tomorrow!
When I find myself focusing overmuch on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal, I remind myself to 'Enjoy now'. If I can enjoy the present, I don't need to count on the happiness that is (or isn't) waiting for me in the future".
I'm not saying I'm glad it happened. Not exactly. But I'm not sorry to be the person I am today, and to have the life I have now. Even though it's not what I thought I wanted for my future, a year ago, it is what I want now.
Look to the present. The great disease of 'I will be happy when ...' is sweeping the world. You know the symptoms. You start thinking: I'll be happy when I get that ... BMW ... promotion ... status ... money. The only way to cure the disease is to find happiness and meaning now.
We live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires.
The supreme value is not the future but the present. The future is a deceitful time that always says to us, 'Not Yet,' and thus denies us... Whoever builds a house for future happiness builds a prison for the present.
Let's have a merry journey, and shout about how light is good and dark is not. What we should do is not future ourselves so much. We should now ourselves. "Now thyself" is more important than "know thyself." Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be green pastures. It's crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of future. Listen, now is good. Now is wonderful.
Praise they that will times past, I joy to see My selfe now live: this age best pleaseth mee.
Present mirth hath present laughter. What's to come is still unsure.
We have within ourselves Enough to fill the present day with joy, And overspread the future years with hope.
We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.
By referring to previous struggles and using them as reasons for not getting on with your life today, you're assigning responsibility to the past for why you can't be successful or happy in the present.
