I learn so much from my clients. One of them gave me the title quote (or the first part of it, in any case) which is from a film called “One True Thing”. I never saw the movie, but it seems like a sure thing to help you find the ease in your life. Suspecting that Hollywood is rarely the originator of this sort of thing, I looked a little further and found the Epicurus quote above. And of course, it doesn’t matter where it comes from, if there is truth in the saying.

If one spends one’s energy loving what one has, rather than comparing it with what one doesn’t have, or what some others seem to have, the idealized “not have” often seems more alluring than the “have” that we know inside and out. But spending your time wishing for something else, takes available time and energy from cherishing what one has. So often we get caught up in the appearances of things and relationships around us without really knowing what’s underneath and the cost of what we are seeing.

Recently, I was exchanging with a friend I thought I had known well for about thirty years, and he revealed a whole world of things, terrible things it turns out, that I didn’t know. People look at him, look at his life and thing, “wow, I would like to be like him”. He is worthy of admiration, but I wonder if those same people would be willing to live through what he has recently described to me. We can never fully know another person’s journey–what they suffer, what they miss, what they secret inside themselves. Energy spent envying others might be more productive spent otherwise.