Love The One You’re With

 In EFC Books, Inner First Class

This week I’m sharing an excerpt from my book Happy Now! 53 Ways to Be Happier Today. If you’d like to read the whole book you can buy it on Amazon ($2.99 for the e-book or $9.99 for the paperback) ooooor you can subscribe to my mailing list (just scroll down!) and get the e-book for FREE! Hope you enjoy this little tidbit and can use it to make your life better today. Blessings!

If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. ~ Stephen Stills

Many of us are familiar with the song “Love the One You’re With” from the 70’s by Stephen Stills of Crosby Stills and Nash. While the song may make a questionable recommendation, I think we can still learn a great lesson from it to apply to our daily lives.

We all have hopes and dreams. We all have people and things we’d like to have in our lives, places we’d like to live or visit, or situations we’d prefer over what we have right now. This is a great thing! These desires keep us going. They give us something to work for and to look forward to. They prompt us to think new and different thoughts to find ways to meet those people, obtain those things, or see those places.

“If I just had that relationship I wouldn’t be so miserable.”

The problem comes in when we buy into the idea that we have to have those things in our lives in order to be happy. If you’ve ever been in a position where you got the thing you wanted, what happened next? Did you feel you’d arrived and your whole life was instant bliss? No. That satisfied desire was replaced with a new goal. It’s just the way we humans are wired.

You may have heard the sentiment that if you’re not happy with what you have now, you won’t be happy with anything you get in the future. This is often used as part of a message about gratitude. I believe that gratitude is definitely part of the overall idea, but to me it’s a reminder that we need to be happy now, no matter what.

I don’t need this to be happy, but it sure would make a great addition to the life I already have!

One of the things I want is a big, beautiful deck with a hot tub. I have come to accept that it will probably not ever happen at our current home. Rather than continue to just wait and fantasize, we redid the deck we have with a power washer, some Thompson’s Water Seal and Rejuvinate cloths to spruce up the deck furniture. We can’t be chilling on the deck of our dreams, but we will not waste the one we have any longer.

In 2002, I moved a thousand miles away from my best friend, Lisa. I miss her on a daily basis. Facebook and text messages are just no replacement for being with her. For a long time, I compared all my new friends to her and kept them at arm’s length because none of them were just like her. Sometimes I even resented them for not being more like her. One day I had a painful realization of how unfair I was being to them. It was not their fault that they are not her. I needed to stop trying to make my new friends into Lisa and love them for who they are instead.

If we are waiting for happiness now, we will always be waiting. Take joy in the blessings you have now and keep an eye on your future prize. “Love the one you’re with” now.

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  • valerie french
    Reply

    I love this – at this point in my life whatever I thought I wanted, needed or dreamed of is long gone by the path of life. But I am grateful and happy for the life I’v lived and the life I have. I am grateful and God gives me a happy heart for all His blessings big and small!\o/\o/

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