Today, I am grateful for the heat on my skin. Right now I can feel the heat and humidity building for the day. It starts out sticky in the morning and gets stickier from there. When I am sitting in the middle of January and wondering about the cold, I will often drift back to a day like today with longing. I will wish that I could have just a glimpse of this type of day to pull me out of the bone-rattling wind and cold.
Too often we want something else. Something that is not in front of us. Why is it that we want what we don’t have in our grasp? Why is it that we are looking to something that we used to have or something that we may get in the future instead of something that is with us right now?
We are bombarded by ads that show how great our life would be if we had this one item. Or we could go on this one trip. It seems as if the people behind the ads can look right into our minds and know that we are not looking at the thing that is right here. We are not looking at the thing that we are holding in our hand, we are looking at the thing that is just out of reach.
For a long time I told myself that I was not enough. I was not a good enough father, I was not a good enough husband, I was not a good enough employee. I would look to the next thing that I could get in order to prove to myself that I was enough.
Kicking a soccer ball with my kids in the backyard was not enough. I needed to grow their skills so they could be great on the field and I would be proven a good enough father. I look back on it now and think that maybe I was a good enough father because I was kicking the ball around with my kids. They didn’t care about being great on the field, they were interested in what was in front of them. They were interested in kicking the ball around with me and having fun.
I still struggle with being enough. I am trying to get better but I sometimes look at that shiny object just out of reach and think “If I could somehow manage to get my hands on that, all of my problems will be solved.” I know it doesn’t work that way. I know the shiny object will always be a little beyond my reach. And I know that if I do get it, there is a good chance I will be disappointed and will need to find the next shiny object.
For now I am going to sit here with the heat on my skin and be grateful for this moment. All I am going to do is focus on being happy right now.
