Searching for what we do not have
A month ago, I saw a poster of Mountain View Reads Together at the vegetarian restaurant we go to Garden Fresh. The recommended read was Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink . I’ve read his other book The Tipping Point before and I loved it which got me really curious about this one. Yeah, yeah…I know you’re curious what we’re doing at the vegetarian restaurant?!? Ok, sometimes, we eat at that restaurant when we cannot think of anything to cook. Believe it or not, their Vegetarian Chicken Curry is good, yeah I still find it funny everytime I think about it. Oh by the way they use soy glutein as meat substitute, so its really healthy and they serve it with brown rice too.
Anyway, back to my story…
Bobby and I always go to Borders or Barnes & Noble after dinner when we have nothing to do at home. We usually just stay there for 2 to 3 hours reading books and/or magazines. Recently, I’ve been looking for Blink and for 3 times it has been out of stock. It would take me at least 20 minutes looking for it. It kinda dawned on me that there were thousands of books at the store, why was I wasting my time looking for that one book they didn’t have?! For some time, I just stopped looking for it…and read other books instead. When it was finally available, it didn’t turn out to be as good as I was hoping it was gonna be.
I know this is a bit of a stretch, but I kinda realized, most of the time, we always ache for the things we do not have. It keeps us blind from seeing that we do have everything else — minus that thing we’ve been looking for.
I think maybe God intended that nobody gets everything they want. Otherwise, what else will we have to live for? I’m not saying that we should stop dreaming — I also believe He gave us that ability to dream so we can learn to aim high or higher.
I think nothing explains my thoughts better than the the Serenity Prayer: "God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Discernment is our biggest challenge in preventing ourselves from dwelling in disappointment nor settling for something less than what we can achieve. As they say, life is what we make it — which means our happiness is all in our hands. Life is too short. Don’t waste it.
