Hey Hagop,
I love your blog. It is so inspirational. It is so very hard to not to do the compare game or the would of could have should have game. What I have found that has helped me is realizing that I need to be experiencing whatever I am supposed to experience and am exactly where God wants me to be at the moment. That doesn't mean I should strive to do better but it means I shouldn't dwell on what I am not. Yoga and prayer has helped me achieve greater awareness
(at a constant level) of the fact that God loves me and has never failed me. Even when times are tough God has always been there for me. He knows all the problems that I face and our internal peace comes by trusing him. So sure I would love to be richer, prettier, thiner, etc but I can honestly say that I would not want to trade with anyone else if I couldn't be close to God or if I had to give up my identity and not be me. I try to store my treasure in heaven, again not easy to do with our culture. But if I focus on the positive it is harder for the comparing/reliving failures junky thinking to get a foothold.

This past weekend I went to DC. During my return I had to carry my checkin luggage to this holding area that had a massive backup of luggage on the floor. There was one guy feeding a suitcase at a time through an xray machine at one end of the room. There were supposed to be two xray machines but the other xray machine had broken. No one else was helping him or watching the luggage. Anyone could have walked up to this luggage area and taken something or put something in there. My flight was leaving in 45 minutes and I still had to get through the area where the passengers had to take off their shoes and walk through the metal detectors. This was a very long line. So I had to make a choice... to leave my luggage and get in line or wait and make sure my luggage went through the xray machine ok and then miss my flight.
I decide to leave my luggage, yet there was a part of me that really wanted to look back and see if I could sneak my luggage to the head of the holding area. There was about a 20ft by 20ft area of other peoples luggage in front of my luggage.
And then ... I hear the small still voice. Leave the luggage and don't look back. I couldn't help think of Lot's wife when she looked back and was turned into a pilar of salt. So I left my luggage and I didn't look back and my luggage made it on my flight without a problem.
Trusting in a source higher than us and believing good things are happening to us all the time is what helps me get out of the compare game. I have what I have, I am what I am and when I leave this earth I only take with me the things that I have cultivated with me while here.
Soming it up in the words of my all time favorite group the Beatles... 'the love you take is equal to the love you make.'
God bless you Hagop.
Dawn | 08.16.05 - 11:18 pm | #