What Makes You Happy?
When I take the time to stop and think about what it is that really makes me happy, I’m glad that I can give a very simple answer: Being alive, my family, and cycling! And I’m very grateful for every moment that I am able to say that. There was a great quote that I came across recently thanks to Garr Reynolds and I thought it really helped put that attitude of being grateful for your life into complete perspective, check it out:
Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will shine like the sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful. Persist in gratitude, and you will slowly become one with the Sun of love and love will shine through you its all-healing joy – Rumi
How amazing is that? So what makes you happy? Is it being alive, waking up, something simple? I hope so. Check out this awesome video from Jon Rawlinson to see how people from all around the globe answered this simple question:
Pondering (In)significance
Earth, our Pale Blue Dot, as seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft from 4 billion miles away. JPL/NASA, 1990.
I’ve recently been reading Carl Sagan’s classic book “Pale Blue Dot”. Right off the bat, in the very first pages of the introduction, Sagan so clearly and succinctly summed up the significance of our day-to-day minutiae and even our struggles as a species compared to our relative size in the universe. While describing the image above, in just a few sentences Sagan dismantled all of the posturing and pettiness that we engage in day after day, year after year, and generation after generation. If we could all read these words and understand that our lifetimes are too short and our significance so minor in the grand scheme of things, maybe we would be able to be more at peace with ourselves, our lives, and each other. Here’s an excerpt from Pale Blue Dot. I hope you find it as thought provoking as I did, and maybe, just maybe, the next time life’s trials and tribulations seem inconceivably large to you, this might help you put things into a little perspective:
Dream a Little Dream
“Day Dream (Explore!)” Creative Commons by Loving Earth
I have a 3 year old son who seems to have some amazing clarity and insight into life. It never fails to surprise me when he says something that stops me in my tracks and makes me reconsider everything. Maybe it’s because the mind of a 3 year old is uncluttered and unfettered by the ingrained biases and rules that we “grown ups” live with. Anyway, this weekend was Valentine’s Day and my little guy was eating a box of Sweethearts (you know…the little candy hearts with catchy sayings on them). Well, he got one that said “Dream Big”. He thought about it for a moment and then said “Actually, I dream little. That’s why all my dreams come true”. SLAM! In two short seconds he hit the “grown up” idea of dreaming big in the solar plexus. Almost as soon as he said it, he was on to the next thing and smiling and enjoying his life.
But, those few simple words dove deep inside of me and got me really thinking. We were always told as kids to dream big. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact my little guy dreams of being the first person to walk on Mars. But I think that we get so hung up on our big dreams that we forget or lose sight of those little ones. And by getting caught up in our big dreams, we usually set ourselves up for disappointment of some kind or another. If we’d focus more on those smaller goals (our “little dreams”) we’d find out that we accomplish amazing things every day, just in small increments. By recognizing these smaller goals we’d feel a sense of constant accomplishment and that leads to a sense of happiness on a very frequent basis. So, maybe my little guy is on to something. As far as I can tell, he’s the happiest person I know. So go ahead, dream small and make your dreams come true!
Riding on Thin Ice
“Biking on Ice” Creative Commons by HectorHannibal
Right around this time last year, I ruptured a disc in my neck and it kept me sidelined for over 5 months while we worked on different non-surgical solutions. I was bummed out, but eventually things got back to normal…mostly (I still have numbness in two of my fingers). Then I went the rest of the year injury free. I almost started taking my healthy state for granted when earlier this week I woke up with some pretty severe neck and back pains. My thoughts immediately flashed back to last year’s ruptured disc incident. “Oh crap! Not again!” was actually more what was going through my mind. Luckily for me, I only tweaked a rib out of place and between a quick visit to my chiropractor and another to my massage therapist, I was back on the bike in no time at all.
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Zen on Two Wheels by Chris Spagnuolo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.