At one point I made a serious attempt at gratitude journaling. I learned that the many moments of delight I encounter on any given day don’t stick in my memory. In those moments I am aware of the experience (I really do think “if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is” often) but it drifts into the forgotten realms. I don’t randomly have thoughts like, “hey Craig, remember that delightful thing from that other moment?” I have to intentionally pause to make a space for those thoughts to appear.
Humans by nature have a strong desire to control and predict. We want to know what happens at the end of the story, and we focus on those things we can measure and easily influence.
~ Cierra Martin from, https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2022/11/21/more-dancing-less-box-checking/
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Can one remove a desire? This desire which I definitely have, has not abated through familiarity (something which I believe can cause a desire to fade.) I think the only way is to connect the many experiences which did not go through my control-it desire, and led to happiness. “See brain, we got to delight and there was not even an attempt at control there.” Pausing in moments of delight, as it were, to ask, “well… how did I get here?“
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