Everyone has desires and dreams which are nice to look forward to, but if we start imagining them as the solution to all our problems, or the one and only thing that will bring us long-lasting happiness, or thinking of them with the mindset of "when such-and-such happens, then I'm going to be able to really give it my all and be truly happy," it can quench the happiness, fulfillment and growth that we can have right now, today.

The lesson of giving our all to the present is a valuable one. It will make us happier and enable us to do what we are meant to do.

What Are We Waiting For?

A young woman accompanied her husband to his temporary work station on the edge of a desert. Living conditions were primitive at best. He had been advised against her moving there, but she wanted to be with him. The only housing they could find was a run-down shack near a small village. The heat was unbearable and the days were long and boring because her only neighbors were the villagers, and she didn't speak their language.

When her husband's work took him even further into the desert for two weeks, loneliness and the wretched living conditions got the best of her. She wrote to her mother that she was coming home--she just couldn't take it anymore. In a short time, she received a reply from her mother that included these two lines:

"Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw mud, the other saw stars."

She read the lines over and over. "All right!" she said to herself. She would look for the stars.

In the days that followed, she set out to make friends with the villagers. She asked them to teach her weaving and pottery. At first, they were distant; but as soon as they sensed that her interest was genuine, they returned her friendship. She became fascinated with their culture, history--everything about them. She began to study the desert as well; and soon it, too, changed from a desolate, forbidding place to a marvelous thing of beauty. She studied the forms of cacti and other desert plants. Later, she became such an expert on the area that she wrote a book about it.