What Colour Are Your Far Away Fields?

Funny how when you stop looking for things they arrive.
I have a blog Friend Annie, who wrote this post .
When I read it I was struck by how often I look at other people and wish I had what they had.

I wish I was financially independent. I wish I was better looking, more handsome. I wish I was fitter, stronger faster. I wish my job was more fulfilling, I wish my partner and I understood each other better and communicated better. I wish I could have great sex every day of my life and never tire of it, and that it could be with a few different people. I wish I had a flash car. I wish I could do something for humanity. I wish I could make my son proud of me. I wish I was proud of myself. I wish I had a house of my own.

Funny how when you start wishing the list can go on forever. The problem is that if I am wishing for something, I am looking away from where I am at, to where I think I might want to be.

If I see a guy driving a Bentley and say to myself I wish I was him, what happens if I see him go home alone to an empty house and drink himself into a stupor because of his problems with depression and the discover that his testicular cancer is going to kill him in 6 weeks. Do I still want to be him? NO of course not.

So not only am I looking elsewhere and wishing, I am not even seeing clearly what I am looking at.

So I have a desire to see things clearly and just like when you are in a fog, the clearest place to look is immediately around you. I must look at myself. What do I see? I am a 40 year old Dad, in good shape. I have a job and a partner. I live in a pretty decent place where the weather is normally agreeable to staying fit. I have friends in distant countries.
My partner is crazy about me. My son loves me.
I have goals that are achieveable.

Now if I am to look clearly, I could perhaps write about all the negative things too. But I know what they are and I don't find it helpful to look at them too much. Suffice to say for me its about taking the positive about where I am and weighing it up against the realistic possiblities of the where I want to be, and taking action to get the result.

In other words, discovering what is it that I must absolutely do to achieve a place of peace and contentment and self fulfillment.

1 Be in a great relationship = my taking responsibility for my role in the parts that are not great.
2.Being a successful writer = my taking responsibility for sitting down on my ass and writing.
3.Completing an Iron Man one time in my life = my taking responsibility for training.
4.Being the best father I can be = Stepping more into my power to take responsibility to get what we need to be together more often.

The list in fact for me at the moment is endless. That is perhaps a negative sign that I am not very happy in myself. The positive side is I realise that and I am discovering ways to cope, to improve and to shorten the list.
The strategy results in the list being reduced little by little till one day without really trying to achieve happiness and inner peace, but rather dealing with the issues that make one unhappy, you achieve a place of serenity.
I urge you to make a list if you have to. Make it as long as possible. Often there is one thing, one thing only that you can identify that if you don't do you will die. If you can find that thing, I urge you to pursue it to your hearts content.

On another note, we have had the wettest winter in my four years here. The motorway is cut off because of a land slide as is the Grand Corniche. The connection between the Grand and Moyenne is also cut. So traffic is just crazy. It took 2 hours to get to work this morning which was about 1.20 more than usual. Despite the constent rain and landslides I managed to get out for run on Sunday in my new running shoes. I ran 13k. I swam 600m yesterday.