waiting for happiness
Have you ever noticed that we often live for tomorrow. We think:
If I can just ___________, then I will be happy
If I can just be with ___________, then I will be happy
If I can just get _____________, then I will be happy
We all do it from time to time. Perhaps you are familiar with thoughts like these:.
If I just get that promotion or raise I’ll be happy.
When I go on that vacation I’ll be happy.
When I lose 10 lbs I’ll be happy.
It is great to plan for the future, but when you tie your happiness to future events, all the good in today passes you by. Life passes you by. You miss an opportunity to be happy right now, in the present.
This tendency can be magnified when caring for a loved one with cancer. You find yourself holding your breath, anxiously waiting for the next bit of good news so that you can be happy.. It is like you put yourself into a self imposed time out. You are waiting for everything to be OK, to return to “normal”. These thoughts may have crossed your mind:
Once their chemotherapy is over, then I will be happy.
Once their radiation treatment is over, then I will be happy
Once they have surgery, then I will be happy
Once their cancer marker goes down, then I will be happy
Once their CT scan comes back clear, then I will be happy
Once the doctor says their cancer is in remission, then I will be happy
Once I can return to my normal life, then I will be happy
Once my loved one is healthy and happy, then I will be happy
You may even realize you were happy before your loved one’s cancer became part of your life, but didn’t recognize it. Didn’t appreciate it. This is not true for everyone, but it is for a lot of us.
When caring for someone you love with cancer, living for tomorrow can be problematic. Thinking “once ________ happens, I can be happy” gets in the way of seeing all the good things in your life, right now, today. Equally true, if you are consumed with worry about your loved one, you are missing the opportunity to enjoy life with them today.
The problem with having our mind in the future, and having our experience of now compared against a hypothetical future, we are not really living in the moment. We are living in this strange sort of space between this moment and the moment that hasn’t yet happened. We think, if we can just get to that point everything will be happy. Or conversely, if we are so afraid of what might happen in the future, we are worried and stressed today. So we are living in an idea. We are living in a story. Not our reality.”
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These things are our inner dialogue or storylines we tell ourselves all the time. A point we are waiting for, when something important might happen.
The moment we let go of that hypothetical future, instead we get to experience the richness, the beauty of this moment with your loved one. Right now.