Life is an interesting journey.
You get to the point where you think you’ve got yourself all figured out and – bam – it hits you.
Something happens that sets you on end and has you start thinking about other possibilities.
There was a time when I figured I’d never leave Placer County and here I am in my 18th year in Manteca unable to imagine living anywhere else.
Owning a house – or should I say making mortgage payments on one - was never a realistic possibility. Going from one high-priced market to another made buying seem like a futile exercise. Even after becoming a homeowner and having that change I figured lightning would never strike twice. It did.
Now I find myself rethinking another of those “this-will-never-happen” absolutes that we all put in place in our minds.
It’s funny how one gesture makes you rethink everything even if you’re humming along through life.
There is, after all, a big difference between being content and being happy.
Content isn’t a bad thing. It just means that you’re satisfied with your lot in life. That is one heck of a lot better than having envy of what someone else has or judging your self-worth on something that you think you want to obtain.
Happiness, by contrast, isn’t necessarily a good thing. A lot of people have crashed and burned pursuing happiness goals that kept eluding them.
That’s the beauty of happiness. It comes with risks – lots of them. It makes sense as if you are just given something or walk into nirvana, as it were, how would you know that you were truly happy? The risks that it takes obtaining happiness make it all the more precious.
It’s kind of like an offspring that gets a car from their parents and doesn’t have to worry about insurance, payments, gas, or maintenance costs.
Most tend to drive – and treat – the car entirely differently than something they acquired and paid to maintain through their own labors.
Value is added proportionately to the amount of work you put into something whether it is your job, your passion, or your relationships.
Fear, though, stops many of us from venturing from our comfort zone. There’s nothing wrong with that if you simply want to be content.
Thinking over things tends to put the brake on taking chances. Nothing is guaranteed in this world, including happiness. And you really can’t have true success – and know what it is when you have it – unless you have failed.
On the flip side, fear keeps you from doing stupid things. Those who leap before they look may have a safe landing but it’s a result based entirely on odds. Yes, you can think about all the possibilities before you jump and figure you’ve taken every reasonable precaution and still end up slamming against rocks instead of splashing down in the water.
You can fail even with a plan. Life simply has risks. The great unknown is meant to be explored with smart courage and not stupidity. Simply plunging into something such as crossing the Atlantic to settle in America or heading west to California in the 1850s without planning and objectives would have been foolhardy at best and disastrous at worst.
You get one opportunity at life. Regardless of your lot in life, it is your call whether you are content or happy. And whether you opt to seek the latter it all comes down to having courage and seizing the opportunity to see where it takes you.
You know a dream is like a river
Ever changing as it flows . . .
. . . Too many times we stand aside
And let the waters slip away
‘Til what we put off ‘til tomorrow
Has now become today
So don’t you sit upon the shoreline
And say you’re satisfied
Choose to chance the rapids
And dare to dance the tide.
Lyrics to Garth Brooks’ “The River”
To contact Dennis Wyatt, e-mail dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
