The Essence of Joy, Love, & Peace

I’ve met some very powerful, influential, and even a few wealthy people both in my personal life and in my professional work as a counselor in private practice. You would be surprised at how they struggle. They also have weaknesses. Beneath their tough, polished veneer (what Brene Brown calls “armor”), these successful grownups are just emotive children like you and I, yearning for acceptance and approval. If the rich and powerful are struggling, then that tells us that money and power are not the ultimate key to ending suffering. What is?

It is true that we live within political systems, organizational structures, and social constructs and these influence our well-being. Yet, the fight is not me against the enormous system. It is not even us, like-minded folks, against them. It is a deeply personal, individual struggle that each of us goes through. Yes, there is strength and security in numbers, even a sense of acceptance in comraderie. But do not be mislead in the masses when life is actually lived in your mind–your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.

From your mind comes the lens in which you process your experiences. I cannot help anyone, if I cannot help myself. Mental illness aside, if I’m continually crying in depression, slumping in hopelessness, and mired in frustration (even understandable anger), where is the evidence of my faith in a Divine Entity? Didn’t someone spiritual once explained that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen?” My lack of contendedness or gratitude for the minute but abundant blessings in my life blinds me from foresight. Foresight is the ability to look ahead and plan our steps with discernment. I get foresight through insight, which is the ability to discern judiciously, wisely, based on past experiences. But I get the most insight from submitting to the divine Source of all insights.

Without foresight, I am without much hope. How then can I help the person right in front of me? If I’m not mindful of the influence I have on the person in front of me, whether I am sitting at a conference, talking with a client, or interacting with the cashier, right here and right now, how do I imagine changing “the system,” much less fight it? Do the social justice warriors not realize that while they pull on our heart strings with their passionate wailings, their own short sightedness contributes to the problems? The system is made up of individual, fallible humans, not any all-powerful, influential, or wealthy gods. Even if certain people act like they are little gods, we can still use insight to guide us to interact with them in a way that produces fruit for us. Joy, love, and peace are achievable, but we got to be these seeds. Let us drop the fear, the bitterness, the demands, the self righteousness, etc… May our eyes be opened even wider.