Experience.

A friend and I recently talked about mind-made barriers to happiness. "I'll be happy when..." It's a hard habit to break, to just learn to be happy without any prerequisites. It really got me thinking about some of my own barriers to happiness, why I put them there? why this particular barrier? how do I bring it down?

My barrier is money, it's always been money. As someone who has never really had much money, i've always felt like i'm missing out. It's not that I feel that money is the key to happiness, its a little more complicated than that for me. Money for me has always symbolized a gateway to experience. Little paper tickets, that let you go on the rides at the fair. It's not that I can't be happy, strolling around the fair, and thinking i'm a good person, and having some good friends, and being healthy, and being able to look at all the people and sights, and smelling all the nice smells. I just see people all around me having fun on the rides, and I want to play too, but I don't have any tickets.

I beleive that the human soul, is basically, "the sum of individual experience." Or maybe better understood by saying, experience is what feeds, and nurishes our souls. The sum of all the things you've learned, you've accomplished, you've senced with your sight, hearing, taste, and touch, all the emotions you've felt, all the obsticles you've overcome. This is the meaning of life to me. Strengthening, and feeding, and protecting, and nurishing that soul, our most precious "self," is priority #1. I beleive that true happiness is a product of a healthy soul.

When I feel like I'm spinning my wheels, when everyday just feels the same, it makes me unhappy. If I don't feel like my soul is getting enough "food", or exercise, it makes me depressed.

My obsession with money, is less about the money, and much more about openning up the flood gates of experience. There are infinate experiences to be had in a finite amount of time, and every moment you spend going through the same motions you always do, is a moment you could have spent strengthening your soul.

When opportunities to nurture my soul are blocked by money, it is incredably frustrating. I'd love to spend my time making music, learning other peoples music, practicing an instrument, and nuturing my soul through music, but I can't afford to buy an instrument. I'd love to backpack to Machu Pichu, and just marvel at the wonder of it, but I can't afford it. I'd love to join a yoga class and a gym, to spend time, focused on being healthy, be disaplined enough to do it regularly, meet new people, but I couldn't afford the membership.

Lately, this has been my thought process, "My soul is wilting, and gettiing weaker day by day, because I can't afford to have new experiences, I can't afford to learn new things, I can't go anywhere and see or do something new and exciting, because I can't afford it. I'm stuck here just spinning my wheels day in and day out, because money is holding me back."

I'm feeling now like, pushing through a period like this, where you might not be able to nurish your soul as much as you might like to, is possible by doing, and recognizing lots of little things that you can do to enrich your life that cost very little or nothing at all, and just be thankful that you can at least do those things.

I can go for a walk, to get outside, get some sunshine, smell the clean air, and get my muscles moving. I can read a book, to learn something new, to exercise my imagination, to hear something explained to may never have made sence before. I can paint or write, to express myself, to create something from nothing. I can love my kids, and spend every moment I can with them, never miss a second, they are fountains of experience, my experience as a parent changes every new day they are alive, as they get older and have experiences of their own that I can share in. While I have no money, and am basically barred from a large amount of potential experience, why bother thinking about it if there is nothing I can do to change it. It would be much better for me to do the small things that I can do to keep my soul strong, then to do nothing.

I can't change the fact that I don't have money. I can't change the fact that my life, without money, isn't really all that attractive, to me, or anyone else. I can't change the fact that some experiences are out of my grasp for now. I don't have to let my soul wither away though, I don't have to focus on the things I can't change, I don't have to miss out on all the opportunities to stay strong, and grow stronger that don't cost anything. I have health and freedom, 5 fully-functioning sences, enough money to survive, (for now ;)) determination, and dreams.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.