I made my way back toward Meditation In A Bottle the monastery and noticed a middle-aged man waiting near the entrance; he had his hands clasped, indicating that he would like to speak with me. When I walked over to where he was waiting, he said, “Thank you for a moment of your time. I must make a difficult decision and was hoping you could help.When I first came to this area,” he began, “I was very happy. The weather was different, I had many new things to see and do, I met interesting new friends, and I was able to find satisfying work. I felt that this place was where I would live for the rest of my life. But lately, I have been thinking I might be happier if I move away. Now I find the weather not so agreeable, and as I become more familiar with many of the people I once admired, I find them to be not as interesting as I once thought. I am tired of my work, and no longer derive any satisfaction from it.
The man glanced down at the forest floor for a moment, “The way I am feeling now is no different than when I decided to move here — I was fed up with everything where I was living. Now I am tired of everything here and want to make another fresh start somewhere else so that I can be happy again,” he confessed.When I asked him why he was uneasy regarding this, it was a rhetorical question, of course. I knew that a new place and new things would certainly make the man temporarily happy because I remembered how quickly I tired of things when I was young.
Comments