Something is not right.

As a matter of fact most of the people I meet feel the same as me, something is just not right.

Most of us feel it most days.  We go to where we are going and see it along the way – we feel it in the people we meet – and mostly feel it, just under the skin.  Like an inch you can’t quite locate.  The pebble in your shoe that seems to move around – you take off your shoe, shake out your sock, put your shoe back on…. and a couple of steps later you feel the little niggle of it again.

What the fuck is it…..

It’s the constant undercurrent of discontent.

Something is just not right with my life.

I seem happy enough – but not quiet the happiest I could imagine.
I seem wealthy enough – but not quiet wealthy enough, to buy everything I want.
I seem to have enough friends – but not the friends that I want to be with all the time.
I seem safe enough – but so many things could go wrong.

I am swimming against the undercurrent of discontent… it is not sweeping me backwards, I seem to be able to hold my ground…. but I don’t seem to be getting to where I want to be.

So, I take a moment.  And realise that although I believe my discontent is now, it is actually in the future.  My discontent is about what I want in the future because I haven’t got it now.     So, I take that moment and stop looking at others, stop looking outside me, I actually stop swimming against the undercurrent and find, to my absolute amazement, I am not swept backwards one inch….

I am happy.
I am wealthy.
I have friends.
I am safe.

From what I wrote yesterday, I took that moment and just stood there.  I stopped living the discontent of where I am now because up until that moment I hadn’t been living there – I’d been living in the future.  The future where I will be happy, and wealthy and safe – really?

Surely, and thankfully, the future is a mystery….

I know I can’t know what the future will be, so why am I living there.  I know what the past was, and know I can’t change it.  The only time machine which can go into the future or the past is in my head.

I have realised that my discontent, the discontent of the people that I see each day, the discontent of the world – is in fact the undercurrent of time travel that we are all living in.

The undercurrent is not water, it is not discontent, it is time – it is the time in our head.

The regrets of the past and the hopes of the future create a flow that ignores where we are right now.

Also in doing so I realise the under current of discontent has defined my happiness, my wealth, my friends and my safety – all are which are illusions of the past and future.

I’ve stopped swimming.  I am neither upstream or downstream – I am just here, now.

….. and the water is fine.