How to want what you have

I’m pushing on towards my dream life, the one where I have what I want.

But do I want what I have?  This day, this one day that I will never have again.  This day with it’s boring, with it’s work and it’s thinking about what else it could be if it wasn’t what it is.  It could be fun and purposeful and worth photographing and showing to the world on a social media platform.  Perhaps tomorrow I will want what I have.  Except that, I have found it doesn’t work like that.  Tomorrow I will realise that I want what I had yesterday.

So today we are left with the pushing on towards what could be and the looking back on what has been.  And surely if we could just learn to want what we have then we would have all that we want?  So I ask myself, what do I have?  If I am to learn to want it, then I need to know it.  I need also to know how today fits in with the pushing forward and glancing back and if they can all exist together.

In process I think that they can.  This is where I am at, in my learning to want what I have.  I am figuring out that process is what I want.  It’s happening.  It’s pressing ahead yet the fulfillment is not the sum of each step but in each step there is fulfillment.  I think that I can be okay with this, I think that I can even want this.

I can choose to want it.  The choosing will help.  The choosing to believe that process is fun and purposeful and worth photographing.  It’s not even going to be the counting of blessings.  Some days feel less blessed than others, and some days more and then we end up with comparison and comparison ends up in a feeling of lack.

So, it’s not the measuring that will help because process can’t be measured.  Not moment by moment anyway, not day by day.  Process is okay with the bad days, the days that I snap at my children and don’t tidy my house.  These moments don’t define nor limit me and if I measure myself by them I will not want what I have.  And so I will stop doing that, stop believing that I am characterized by my past failures and what I could not previously do.  Look what I can do now, look what I can’t do yet.

Today’s brush strokes might be small and tentative, they might even need to be painted over.  The brave artist will allow you into the process, will not mind if you look and don’t understand.  The brave artist won’t be derailed by mistakes and will welcome the questions.  He might take a step back and consider each stroke, each mark on his canvas.  And then pick up his brush once again, pressing on towards his vision.  He will try to explain what he wants to create and some might see it and others won’t and that will be okay.  The brave artist is vulnerable but resolute and he probably wants what he has because it would be nothing without what it is right now.  The right now matters, even the tentative now, even the mistakes that need to be painted over.

And so to want what I have I need to be brave?  Brave enough to immerse myself in the process and to be okay with each moment, brave enough not to measure each moment.  Brave enough to choose to want what I have.  I am discovering that as I choose to want what I have I learn to love the unfinished, I learn to love the now.

It’s all I have but it’s not finished.