In the daily rush to arrive, 

are you sure you’re going 

in the right direction? 

Work. Family. Community. Scrambling to meet multiple duties and accomplish our goals, from places to be to plans to be made, we’re so often in a hurry. Hearing of the counter-productivity of multitasking on the news, we continue writing that text on our smartphones while mentally noting what we need from the grocery store on the way home.

Much of the time, most of us are so busy doing and going in hopes of arriving, that we don’t stop to consider the direction we’re heading.

Maybe we chose it due to others’ expectations.

Maybe we just ended up heading there because everyone else was.

Whatever the reason, we’re on the move. But wait a minute. Where are we going?

And when we finally arrive, will we look back with bewilderment? Regret? Or a sense of a life well-lived? A life in which, we didn’t aimlessly rush off with the crowd, but had made sure we were headed in the right direction.

Peace doesn’t begin with another person.

It begins with me. 

“Peace.” Hearing the word, our thoughts often turn to another one: “World.” We smile. Then sigh. It’s a lovely ideal, but one which feels utterly beyond us.

Finding ourselves unsure what to do about world peace, let’s consider an alternative: peace in our little corner of the world. Granted, many days this also seems beyond us, but it is at least it’s something we can work towards. Indeed, it’s why we learn Buddhism and cultivate ourselves.

How?

We cultivate self-discipline to refrain from speech that would disturb others.

We cultivate broad-mindedness to better appreciate and respect others’ viewpoints.

We cultivate compassion to see a stranger’s suffering as clearly as our own and to seek a way to alleviate it, humility to realize we acted improperly and need to apologize, generosity to share our good fortune with those who have less than we do.

Succeeding in these, we will help bring peace to those around us.

Pleasure from indulging ourselves is momentary.

Guilt from having done so lasts much longer. 

Eating an entire bag of chips, browsing online and impulsively buying a new gadget, hitting snooze on the alarm clock as we burrow back into the sheets—all are done because we feel entitled to them.

Perhaps we had worked hard and felt a reward was deserved.

Perhaps we hadn’t worked hard and sought to distract ourselves from self-reproach.

Perhaps we were unhappy.

Or just bored.

And so we indulged ourself and felt a surge of enjoyment. All too soon, however, that momentary pleasure passes and only the memory remains. And with it guilt. Having previously determined the futility of such indulgences, we had told ourselves we wouldn’t repeat them. And yet, we just did. Feelings of frustration, remorse, embarrassment fester within us. They linger, enduring far longer than any fleeting satisfaction from our latest bout of indulgence.

What can we do?

Understand we have more work to do, commit ourselves to doing it, and get to work.