Anything we encounter for the first time feels fresh and exciting, but in due course everything loses its freshness.
Promotions, pay raises, relationships, new houses and vacations are all subject to the law of diminishing excitement. As humans, we often live posthumously -- we only value what we lose.
Just like the beautiful tree outside your house, whatever is constant becomes invisible. Only upon reflection can we see how empty we may feel even when there is much to celebrate.
As our appreciation erodes into taking things for granted, we embark upon new conquests to medicate our unquenchable thirst for novelty. Our lives are spent chasing one mirage after another and the things that gave us joy fade like points on a receding horizon.
But breakthroughs in happiness don’t necessarily involve a change in external conditions. They can come from very slight shifts in our inner consciousness. To know this intellectually is easy and common knowledge, but to practice it experientially requires a true awakening.
As the Indian mystic Osho explained, the human mind compulsively chases what it does not have, yet happiness can only come from the things we do have. By falling into this habit, we trap ourselves in an enduring cycle of unhappiness as what we have in our lives will cease to bring us joy.
We will chase happiness through what we do not have, lost in an eternal daydream of that which is outside our grasp, hidden in the mist of the future.
We are, says Osho, at point A, always dreaming about point B, but then the moment we reach point B without truly celebrating it, we are once again in pursuit of the next shiny object.
The necessary breakthrough is in seeing something with fresh eyes despite having seen it a thousand times before. In comedian George Carlin’s words, “Do you ever get that strange feeling of vuja de? Not déjà vu, vuja de. It’s the distinct sense that somehow, something that just happened has never happened before.”
Marcel Proust, the French novelist, said, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.”
Similarly, Osho talks about awakening to the beauty of every moment, recognizing that no two moments are ever the same. Rather, every moment is unique and extraordinary.
When we are setting goals and planning our lives, we ask ourselves, “What do I really want?” Unfortunately, this question places the spotlight on what it is in life that we don’t already have. Instead, the question “What do I have that I was once excited about?” would help uncover the many elements we have taken for granted in our addiction to novelty.
To be able to look at the people in our lives and embrace them as a mystery and appreciate them as the masterpiece we once saw them to be is rejuvenating. It will help us rise above the manmade poverty driven not by scarcity, but by our inability to appreciate what endures while robotically chasing what is elusive.
We can then have the eyes to see that our loved ones at dinner are not the same when we encountered them at breakfast.
As Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”