It’s got a subtle way of getting away from us, that gratitude.

It’s so easy to think about the future. It’s so easy to dream about what might be or could be… or worse, if there’s no vision at all… even easier to fall in to the psychological rabbit hole of Uncertainty.

What could’ve been…
What has been…
What might be…

The ‘what ifs’ plague the mind.

I find myself wanting more. I look and search and claw and crave for more.
I’m not sure what that means. I just know where I’m at right now isn’t enough.

Do more. I demand it.

It’s the obsession with progress that gets me. It’s relentless and unforgiving. It doesn’t stop.

I can’t help but wonder if this is that Evolution thing they talk about. I feel it. Everyday it eats me alive. Do more. See more. Experience more. I don’t care how you get there, just feed me more.

The brain doesn’t quit. It’s nonstop. It’s infinite.
The mind craves to see what’s behind the glass door. It needs to know. It needs to understand.

The mind need improvement. It needs purpose and direction. It needs change and variety and it needs steps in to the future.

Gold stars, gold medals, and big accolades. They satiate the appetite for a little while, but soon enough we’ll find ourselves starving again.

I need to be better than yesterday.
I need to earn the day.
I need progress.

And when it comes it feels wonderful. When we’ve stepped forward, when we’ve begun the venture in to the unknown… the job’s finished, the thing’s fixed, the record’s broken.

It feels great.

But tomorrow’s a new day. It’s a brannnd new day.

“Success is never owned, it’s rented, and the rent is due every single day.”

Michael Chandler, MMA fighter

I recently found out about something called the Gold Medal Syndrome. These Olympic athletes work their whole adult career to achieve this one singular thing… but then they do.

What’s next? Where do you go?
What do you do? How do you live?
All sense of meaning has been thrown in to a void, purpose a vacuum.

Abby Wambach, American soccer Olympian, talks about the identity crisis upon leaving the sport. It’s your identity. It’s who you are. And without it, we are nothing…

until a new purpose is born.

Da-dum.
Da-dum.
Da-dum.

more.
future.
forward.

Da-dum.
Da-dum.
Da-dum.

It’s a craving that won’t leave.
It’s a steady drum beat that never. goes. away.

endless and unstoppable.

The relentless drumbeat is useful, though. It’s completes things. It gets us awards. It gets us accolades. It raises our status. It raises our acceptance.

But I also wonder if it’s at the cost of our happiness.
It doesn’t stop. It’s never enough. Life is never enough.

Life is not good enough now.
So we itch to escape our skin.
But the skin isn’t going anywhere.

It is us. It’s who we are, how we think.

There is no such thing as more. This is it. This moment.
We’ve got right here, right now. No other point in time exists.

Because by the time we get to tomorrow, it’ll already be today.
We are here already. There’s nowhere else to go, nowhere else to see.

It’s this moment in time.

It’s our current relationships and our current job and our current life. It’s our current struggles with our current money with our current time. No other place exists.

We get to plan and work towards a brighter future. But in the wise words of Ferriss Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”

I’m so hellbent on the journey forward, so engrossed in what comes next and what’s in the future… sometimes I forget there’s no other such moment as now.

I forget to be grateful for what I’ve already got. I don’t think about my friends and the laughs and the way I already spend my time.

Gratitude.

It’s a beautiful beast, but damn is it a hard one to tame.

We’ve already got so much to be thankful for, and we haven’t even stopped to appreciate it.

It could always be so much worse. There’s always something to be grateful for.

“I was so focused on doing bigger and better that I forgot to focus on the things that’re actually important to me – Doing the things I enjoy each and everyday”

Dan Bilzerian