Do you remember looking for four leaf clovers as a kid?
Isn't it strange how some people don't even notice patches of clovers that they pass by daily? Isn't it strange how some people can notice a patch of clovers but even after years of passing by, or sitting in or spending time near, the patch, they never even see the four leaf clovers within that patch?
In life, everyone is searching for happiness. Everyone has self-interest.
Greed is the extent to which your desire to obtain objects, extends beyond your self-interest. For instance, if I were to steal a car, I may end up going to jail. If I were to get a loan for a car that I couldn't afford, I might face financial struggles in the future.
The amount of happiness we will obtain in life is based on how closely our world view or blueprint matches reality. None of us will ever have a fully perfect blueprint of the world. One major distinction between people is their understanding of delayed gratification. In other words, according to their blueprint, do they make short term decisions that negatively affect their long term gains?
Sin is an action that is harmful to oneself. Sacrifice is a word that refers to losing something in the short term to gain something longer in the long term. Sin is an action that is inward and selfish, causing discord in a community. Love is an action that is outward and selfless, causing unity in a community. While most people believe love to be a feeling, it is actually an action, the opposite of which is sin. While on the surface, it may appear that people who have self-interest, would sin, it is quite the opposite, that people who have self-interest should actually choose love over sin.
I once met an old man in a coffee shop and he taught me about life's thermostat. He said that people have high and low points, above which and below which, we are too hot or too cold. In a sense, happiness comes from living within the set points. Your happiness over time might be the amount of time you spent living within the set points.
While we have many choices, we can take on a day to day basis, finding the right path among the multitude of paths can be difficult. It is like finding the four leaf clover, in the patch of clovers.
As we live our life, we experience trials and tribulations, which are a true blessing because they allow us to move our set points up and down appropriately to live a more happy life. In eastern culture, fasting is common as people actually try to limit their dependency on food, in an attempt to adjust their set points. In western culture, people tend to do the opposite, providing an abundance of food, in an attempt to take the actions which will allow them to stay comfortable within their set points.
Comfort may be associated with living within your set points, while character may be associated with the distance between the high and low points.
To some extent, we can make a mental decision about where we are with respect to our set points. However, just as putting your body into freezing weather can cause death, being in denial about your set points, can also cause harm. This harm can come in one of two ways. Even when beyond our set points, our mental power is strong enough to live as if we were within our set points. Likewise, even when without our set points, our mental power is strong enough to live as if we were beyond our set points.
I once heard a story about a man in a refrigerator freight of a train. He spent the night there and believed he was freezing to death. The next morning, he had died and the autopsy, showed the cause of death was freezing. However, the refrigerator component had never been turned on!
Is it possible to be comfortable, yet still expand your set points? Is it possible to both produce and simultaneously increase production capacity? Is it possible to be completely content with today, yet still want to improve towards a better tomorrow? This is a matter of position versus velocity.
Suppose you want to take a trip from Northern California to Southern California. After three hours, if you were in Fresno, would you be happy? What if you knew that you would get held up in Fresno for another 2 days, due to car trouble?
Contentment is being happy with where you are today in life. It is about being happy with all the cards you've been dealt with up to this point and being at peace with all the things that got you to where you are today. Hope is about being happy with where you are heading in life.
Surprisingly, the formula for hope is actually emotional pain. Trials in life, which cause pain can be a blessing. If you are aware that a four leaf clover exists, and you look hard enough, you can find the four leaf clover in the midst of the patch. If you do, you essentially use the trial as a blessing to adjust your world view closer to reality. This will lead to perseverance, which leads to character which leads to hope.
When you work out, if you do not exercise your muscles to the point of exhaustion, beyond what they are capable of performing, you will not feel pain, but you also will not experience growth? Likewise, people who live life without feeling physical pain find it a curse, because they cannot avoid situations like burning themselves, which cause damage to their body.
So, I encourage you. Be open enough to see the patches of clovers lying right in front of you, day in, day out. Do what is takes to learn that the four leaf clovers exist. That take the time and courage necessary to find them.
