Look Around Us

When I was young, I always wanted to live on the top of a mountain, where the sunlight would filter through the woods and the wind would whistle in my ear. Looking at the stunning photographs of mountain tops which I found on the internet, I longed to have a house of my own on one of those mountains. I wanted to stare into the clear night sky, unlike what I can see from my home, I want to look into a sky mostly covered from the huge treetops.

The idea did not leave me until one day, when I stepped outside one morning, and saw misty mountain tops from a distance. The sight of the smoky blue mountains was breathtaking that I stood still, staring into the mist, listening to the sound of the wind whistling to my ear. To this day, I find it’s challenging to describe what I saw that morning, for it’s more than what I had been wishing for my whole life. The sole reason for this magic was none other than the simple fact that my father had decided to cut some branches off a few trees which were standing right in front of our house. For years, I had been living in the right place that I longed for but had never seen it until that day.

For most of our life, we dream of the things that we want to achieve some day. We look at ourselves and see what we don’t have. We look at the others and see what they have. With the pressure from the ones around us, and from the inside of ourselves we push ourselves to have what we don’t, or what we used to have. Imagining ourselves in the future, we always chase something: a degree, a well-paid job, or a long-lasting relationship. When things don’t go as planned, when things fall apart, we tend to fall down and cry. We become impatient. We want to smash everything in our sight, or to just give up. If we are asked what we want in the end, the answer is ‘happiness’. The way we define the happiness could be different. But it’s no doubt that most of us wish for something that we don’t have the access to now, but want to possess it someday, in some way, shape or form.

But do we ever think about what we have now? Every day, we wake up with a list of things that we need to complete, to keep the streak going. We have forgotten one thing to do in the morning though: to be thankful for what we already have right here with us. In order to do this, we must look around us, and what’s inside us. Only then, will we notice that there are a lot of things to be grateful for: having a roof above our heads, having a family that does not let us starve, and having people who help and motivate us when in need.

Life is such a wonderful journey. People walk through dark forests in search of light, not seeing that if some branches around were cut, they would see the sunlight right in front of them. What they see is the darkness around them, but not what causes the darkness. This is how most of us live our lives, wishing for things we do not have, but never realizing that they are with us even now, if we changed ourselves a bit.

If you fail to see there’s anything that makes you happy now, change the way you look at your life. See from a new perspective and you’ll find out that there are many things to be happy about, while you were waiting for a day to be happy in the future. Take the time to be thankful for everyone and everything you have. Keep clearing your path to the life you’ve always wanted while not leaving behind the little things that make you happy now. Then take a deep breath and smile, for having a lot more than you ever thought.

– Rtr. Heshani Dharmapala