Because life is one big, glorious, unending, never-ending, all-singing, all-dancing party.
If we are not willing to do so, we will be as sad, unhappy, afraid, and lost as the next person, and that will truly limit our experience. And it will also limit us—physically, emotionally, spiritually—because if we limit our experience. This is a key point which can be understood easily, but difficult for many of us to grasp.
It is the secret to having a meaningful life in spite of all of the pain and adversity that surrounds us. You might begin by asking yourself a simple question: Do I have fun in the moments that I live? If you are already a fun person, then by all means keep being a fun person—this is the path of least resistance.
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But if you are unhappy, confused, full of doubt, afraid, miserable or anything else, then keep thinking about the question. Think about it many times throughout the day, and think about it until you understand the root of your unhappiness, your despair. The only problem is that a great deal of the time when we think about being happy and being grateful, we only think about being happy in the moment, about being grateful in the moment.
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That is what I did, and I did it with a very young child, with a teenager and with my friends. We would spend all day at school, sitting on the floor, in the library and jumping rope in the park. And we would say thank you. And we would say I love you, and we would say please, and we would say I'm sorry, and we would say and we'd laugh and we'd play. We were a very happy bunch of very fortunate people. But a certain quality of our contentment (the quality of joy, hope and love) was based on where we were and what we were at that particular moment. It was built on the present, not past, or future, and that's fine.