Ending vacations or high times lifts the degree of difficulty of life; the drone of the humdrum life intervenes. Approaching the end of much anticipated periods brings mini-grief—the challenge to accept that life must return to normal.
Cherished times, especially those with family, are much vaunted. Too many expectations for these times raise our hopes beyond their probable actualisation.
Managing the Moments = Momentary Wisdom
Our problem is we’re allowing the little season we’re in to dictate to us instead of taking the moment on its own terms. Each moment can be enjoyed. It doesn’t matter where we are or aren’t, who we’re with or not with, or what we’re doing or not doing (or have to do). What matters is the approach.
Breaking down life by managing the moment means expectations are squeezed out of the equation, for expectations are the things that hurt us. They can be thought of as hopes gone to town. There’s nothing wrong with having hopes but they have to be checked in truth. That’s wisdom.
But the truth is we all lose the basis of our hopes with expectations run astray.
So, if thought of expectation can be disciplined to the situation, wisdom is sourced.
A Source of Real Hope
We forget that life is sprinkled with high times and low times.
For instance, unless people choose to work more hours, everyone gets a ‘weekend’ even if that happens mid-week. Or another, cycles of family time come and go—whether we arrange them or not.
Life’s full of cycles. Where we get frustrated is in wanting to manipulate life to finer tolerances than life will allow. There are plenty of good times to fill our bag of hopes with.
When we consider this a truth to live by we’ll have no problem looking a little further over the horizon. Real hope’s adept at seeing the indelible light at the end of the tunnel. It focuses on those things that are more certain than our dreamy expectations.
So, the things to focus on are the real hopes that remain for tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. Whilst peripheral vision is kept on these, the moments tend to manage themselves, for there is no mental noise in the head causing unnecessary reflection over what good things have recently gone.
Let’s not allow the present time to ransom our joy because of incorrect vision and misplaced expectations. Hope is the key. Find the tangible hope and focus on it.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
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