Tag: Naval Ravikant

Happiness Is Not Needing More

I don’t need anything more.

No nothing. Of that, I am shore.

I don’t need more stuff, it’s all just fluff.

More clothes? I’ll give mine to the poor.

 

I’m not taking a class or writing a post.

I won’t try putting extra butter on my toast.

I’ll refrain from checking my Facebook Page.

And won’t tweet a Tweet to vent my rage.

I will not compare. I will not look back.

I cannot look forward or fear an attack.

Today is today. And all I can say

To the people who’ve gone astray and lost their way…

EGBOK, my friends. Have faith. Make hay.

Believe me, Receive me. “Everything’s Going to Be OK.

Now… Am I happy?

 

 * * *

I think the entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant would agree with Andy Puddicome, founder of the meditation app, Headspace, that we only find happiness in the present. And we can only be in the present if we are willing to work hard to do  nothing.

Do you feel the TENSION in that statement? I do!

When we meditate, we are trying to do just that. We work (at meditation) to pay attention to only one thing in the present moment. Thoughts of the future and the past and the emotions surrounding those thoughts rip us from our present.

Worry is a particularly useless feeling. It’s a projection of a future over which we have no control. Worry can also be a feeling that shoves us back to some previous time when we wish we had done or said something different. Wayne Dyer used to say, “You can’t should have done anything!” I miss him.

I smile at my own ineptitude. I’m not Naval, nor Andy, nor Wayne. (All men, by the way, and what’s that about?). I am, however, beautifully inept. I am wondering about the depth of my imperfection at this second. When actually, in this very next second, I am happy. Grateful. Here at this moment, to be writing this post and nothing else.

It’s bitchin’, I tell you, bitchin’!