Finding Your Spot Dr. Juan Harrison
Finding Your Spot
Having lived in and visited other countries overseas, I got the chance to compare the countries with more government control and less freedom to our own country. I came away feeling blessed for the freedom to choose how and where I wanted to live.
The double-edged sword of America is the freedom to pursue happiness without the guarantee of happiness. You and I know that happiness is a choice. A rich old lonely bitter person living alone may be a product of some of the choices they’ve made. We know other folks living paycheck to paycheck, maybe almost hand to mouth, who have a sunny disposition and a grateful heart.
Life happens. Divorces occur. People die. Jobs disappear. Calamities and physical disabilities may intrude into our lives. Most of us become adults, get married, have children and have some kind of timetable or goal of where we’d like to be in our lives by a general time. Setbacks occur, but what drives a lot of us is some picture or vision we have of what we’d like our daily lives to look like at a certain point. Sometimes we succeed and achieve that life we dreamed of. Sometimes we don’t get to ring the silver bell.
Life is often not so much about what does or doesn’t happen to us as it is about how we respond to the events in our lives. Families often find that prosperity brings its own set of problems. Those who haven’t been able to grasp the brass ring can tell you about the disappointments and challenges they have faced as they sought to survive in an ever increasingly expensive world.
Somewhere in the middle there are some folks who may have chosen to skip some of the rat race, live very modestly in a smaller home. Maybe the wife stayed home. The car or truck might be a little older, not quite as fancy as the typical SUV driven by a lot of the younger folks. Folks in this category would tell you it wouldn’t take a lot to throw them off stride. Still, maybe they’ve been able to save a little by not feeling the need to keep up with the Joneses.
Along the way, acquiring and maintaining faith in a higher power tends to help one stay grounded. Still, the constant pressure around us, from friends, relatives, and even strangers, can begin to cause us normal folks to question if we’ve missed out on some of the finer or more glamorous aspects of life. That’s about the time we take inventory of the blessings we do have and the pressures we don’t have in a struggle to be a part of the rat race that we can say a prayer of gratefulness for our country, family, friends, home, church, income, our faith, and especially our peace of mind, the thing most people secretly desire.
By Dr. Juan Harrison
