Surprisingly, happiness is not supposed to be found in everything that you do. Even if it’s something we look for in every single thing like an event, a situation, a solution, and so on. If happiness is everywhere, and, in every event, then the very concept of it dissolves. Would this not be true?
To break it down, let’s say, you wake up in the morning and you find the sun’s rays gently laying their warmth across your room. It’s a beautiful morning, not too hot, not too cold, just the perfect weather. You walk out yawning to your balcony and find parrots, nightingales, and woodpeckers greeting you with their vibrancy and chirpiness. What a wonderful start to a morning.
After this, you have a cup of warm tea to freshen you up, take a shower, pray or not, get dressed, and you are off to work. There are not many escalations, none, while you continue to work until the office hours end. You realize it’s been a great day, and now it’s time to unwind. You go home, enjoy a good book, cook a good meal, watch a good show, and then call it a night.
The next day you wake up and it all repeats with the sunshine, the birds, that cup of tea, work, a book, a meal, and a good show; sweet dreams.
Again, the next day is the same, and the next, and the next until the year ends. How would one feel when all has gone well? Obviously, great! Who wouldn’t want such a life?
But after a point of time, one may find the same things that gave them happiness are not making them sad but it’s not doing anything else. It’s a feeling they are used to now – the birds, the sunshine, the good book, the office work, the meal, etc. They’re all just there for the experience of goodness.
The price to pay that makes it all worth it
There are aspects of your work in day-to-day life that you may not like. You love your job but there are some things that you despise facing. For instance, a strategist may love to strategize but hates working on presentations and convincing her superiors that her strategy will produce the necessary long-term ROI. She hates it when she has to sit in a room full of critical stakeholders who want to see immediate results, and therefore, shoot darting questions at her.
However, when she finally convinces them, wipes the sweat off her brow, and gets to delegating her strategy, she finds contentment. Not only that but she experiences the excitement, contentment, and peace of doing her work and seeing it come to fruition.
That’s the difference between a steady flow of joy and joy mixed with a price to pay.
“Success is Sweet and Sweeter if Long Delayed and Gotten Through Many Struggles and Defeats.”
~Amos Bronson Alcott
Nothing comes free! There is a price to pay for all that is done, especially something that you love doing. A mother loves her child but she experiences great difficulty right from the time she delivers her baby to the sleepless nights and caring during sickness, and so on. But the smile and laughter she sees on her child’s face, the joy of watching her child succeed in life helps me settle with the thankless struggles she had to face.
Similarly, while doing business, the sweetness of landing a deal with a high-paying client feels great. However, the time it takes to convert a client till the time all work expectations are exceeded is the price to pay for the job.
The Price to Pay for Excitement, Contentment & Peace
is worthy of your attention in which it enables you
to be grateful and compassionate
toward your work