Peace Be the Journey!

Comedian Mitch Hedberg described how he comes up with his material one time - "I sit at my hotel at night and think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and write it down. Or, if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny." And that more or less sums up why this is my first blog in a long time. But after much nagging from my mom, I decided it was time. I'm at a point in my life where decisions must be made. Not so much "what do you want to eat for supper" decisions, but bigger ones. Now, you have to realize that I am in a place (Troy) that I never expected to be. Or really wanted to be, for that matter. There are often quite large pockets of discontent in my life. It's better than it once was, but the fact remains. I often wonder what my life would be like if I lived in the middle of the mountains, or on the beach (and I don't even like the beach). Or if I had decided to do this or that instead of what I'm doing. Or if I decided to do something to make a lot of money. Or had a really super hot girlfriend. Or if I were some time of extremely popular world leader. Or if I had superpowers. How much better would my life be? Answer - not at all. I have heard before "wherever you go, there you are." Which makes sense. If you go somewhere, you have to be there. Unless you have superpowers that let you separate yourself into separate identities. But on a deeper level, this is the answer to the problem of discontent. No amount of money or natural beauty or any location can change who you are. The spirit of discontent is a dangerous thing. It tricks us into thinking that who we are is determined by where we are or various other factors that really have no effect. To quote John Candy from Cool Runnings, "Derice, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without one, you'll never be enough with one." Just a thought that I struggle with. If your situation is determining who you think you are, you don't know who you are.