28 Mar Good lifts the heart and can turn passing experiences into lasting resources.
There will always be dark times.
But we can still be happy.
There will always be difficulties.
But there will also always be happiness.
This article touches on the important topic of using light to cope with dark, using happiness to get through unhappiness …
via Psychology Today by Rick Hanson
KEY POINTS
- Changes in our lives are inevitable but sometimes unsettling.
- Look around and recognize the relative stability of so many things.
- The more we recognize impermanence, the more we can take refuge in the good that lasts.
Cody Weaver/Unsplash
So many things change. Leaves fall, friends move away, and children leave home. My dad died, and my mom about 10 years before that. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting older (darn, there is no fooling the mirror).
Changes All Around Us
The world changes, too. Evolving technologies alter jobs and lives. Elections happen, and different people take charge. New restaurants open while others close.
The experience itself is always changing, right at the front edge of now. So are the neural substrates of this moment’s experience, fleeting coalitions of millions of synapses coming into being even as they disperse, while the molecular structures of individual synapses themselves are dynamically constructing and deconstructing in the blink of an eye.
It’s kind of unsettling! Especially if things you care about are changing for the worse at any scale, from a big scratch on a table because someone dropped a plate on it (that was me a few days ago) to a factory closing to the chilling title of an article in Science magazine: “Ecological selectivity of the emerging mass extinction in the oceans.”
And yet.
All around and under our noses, so many good things last. Recognizing them lifts the heart, and enjoying them for at least a few seconds in a row helps turn passing experiences into lasting psychological resources woven into your own brain—which, among other benefits, makes you more able to deal with things that are changing for the worse…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE