In my last post, I commented upon how a book that I’d recently read had impacted me and made things more clear regarding happiness, my happiness specifically and how I now had a better understanding of what made me happy.
In The Happiness of Pursuit, the author had suggested making a list of goals, quests or journeys that were important to each of us. My list is in the previous post but there was one that troubled me.
I’d included in my list that I’d like to perform a random act of kindness everyday for a year. As I lay awake early one morning I began to think about this quest. I began to question whether I could achieve that goal or, was I setting myself up to fail.
My concern was not whether I was good enough or motivated enough to perform these acts but, would they be worthy enough acts to qualify. Was honestly greeting someone and wishing them well enough?
I guess I thought that these acts needed to be extraordinary or noteworthy to qualify, something memorable. I was doubting that I could come up with this type of gesture on a daily basis. At the same time, I was concerned that I would count trivial gestures in the absence of a great ones.
Fortunately, a friend helped me see the error in my thought process. While I was thinking grand, she distilled it down to the manageable by reminding me that if it came from the heart and was genuine, the scale was not important. The answers to my questions, were there before me, in plain sight, not seen by a man looking in the wrong place.
I don’t know if learned a new lesson today but if not, I was reminded of one that my Grandma Jones taught me a long time ago. You don’t have to look far from home to find happiness.