Self-growth

How to Find Happiness

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Finding happiness is going to be a huge challenge for me and so many others in 2022 but we can do it if we want to. After three years of a myriad of changes in my life, such as leaving a marriage of 25 years, two moves, buying a house, and learning to adapt to living on my own, I am finally in a good place where I know that I must get back to my writing. I have promised myself, let’s call it a New Year’s resolution, that there will be no more excuses for procrastinating. After considering a number of ideas for writing about my travels “within” rather than “without” since COVID isn’t allowing me to travel very far these days, I chose to tackle a topic of interest to me for a very long time…happiness! Why have we human beings been pursuing happiness, this elusive state of mind, ever since we came to this earth, and why have we failed so miserably at achieving it?

When I stop to reflect on this topic, I realise that my interest in what happiness is began more than 20 years ago. Up to that point, it really was just a word with no significant meaning attached to it. In fact, I had never even stopped to consider whether I was a happy person or not. I was too busy working and getting on with my busy life.

Then one day out of the blue, I overheard a conversation between two people where one of them remarked that in his experience, he had discovered that many people were unable to share in the happiness of another. He concluded that it was almost as if they were jealous of anyone who was always happy. On the other hand, he wondered if it was a case of that old saying “Misery loves company.” It’s true that we all want to be happy, yet we can’t seem to achieve it for some reason. Oh yes, some of us can put on a happy face when underneath we are not. It could be a mask covering up latent anger, sadness, or anxiety which we don’t want others to see. So I began to think about why we would rather talk about our misery instead of doing something about it. Are we afraid to seek our own happiness because it might seem selfish, or is it because we have the wrong idea about what could bring it to us causing us to search in all the wrong places?

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Seeking the Truth of the Matter

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We won’t regret what we do in life only what we did not do.

Whoever said this could not have said it better. Most of us will probably have more regret about what we never got around to doing rather than expounding on what we did do. This is a common lament say those who have worked with the dying. Let’s face it, we can get so bogged down in the business of daily living with obligations to family, friends, work peers, and basically what society expects of us that any dreams we might have had get relegated to the back seat. It’s unfortunate that it’s not until we are on our death beds that we finally realise what we could have had if only….Why do we do this? Why can’t we do what our soul wants us to do? Why do we believe that we should settle for a life that excludes true inner peace and happiness? Did we not come here to do better than settle for second best? These are weighty questions which I have been pondering for some time.

After more than a year of having to live with the ramifications of COVID, many of us older folk are discovering that it has given us more time to consider our past and what lies ahead. Please note that I am speaking for myself as one of the ‘older folk’ and most likely not for our children and grandchildren. Their time is apt to be taken up with work, school, parenting, and whatever it’s taking for them to keep their heads above water during the pandemic.

Like so many of us today, we are having to make adjustments that we had never dreamed of doing before the pandemic. Where we can go and what we can do have been severely limited and yet, I can honestly say that my days are as busy as they were before but with a difference…a huge difference! Whereas before I was spending my time going out and about to visit friends, attending meetings, shopping, visiting my family in Ottawa, and preparing for my annual winter trip over to Thailand and beyond, now I am being forced to rewrite my schedule. My travels are taking on a whole new direction. As we go into a third wave, it’s an misnomer to say that my blog which I named betstravelsabout is rather outdated. But is it?

Reversing my travel from going outward to going inward is a work in progress. So what does travelling within look like and what can I learn from it? How can it ever replace the joy and excitement of getting away from my everyday life in Nova Scotia to return to Thailand and other Asian countries where I built up a whole new gang of friends sharing the same joy in travelling as I did? Some of my closest friends still live there and may have to stay there until they can either go back home to their country or be allowed to pick up their nomadic life once again. Judging by what is happening throughout our world today, their latter choice could become just a dream. Only time will tell. In the meantime, I plan to finish off this post with what ‘travelling within’ looks like for me.

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Handling Stress in the Midst of a Pandemic

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“Nothing is good or bad for thinking that makes it so” – William Shakespeare

I marvel at how great minds have expressed truisms that have lasted for so long and yet go unnoticed by so many of us these days. I chose this one from Shakespeare’s ” Hamlet ” because it is one we need to keep in mind as we face the challenges facing us now and in the future.

As some of the lockdown restrictions imposed upon us by COVID-19 are lifted, we should be thankful for that, but still remain vigilant because this virus will in all probability hang around to haunt us again. For the present, we  can now go outside and use our parks and trails to get a breath of fresh air and some much needed exercise.  As our days slowly morphed into spring,  we joyfully welcomed this small step forward to some kind of normality which will hopefully relieve some of the stress that many Canadians are feeling during this time.

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Thoughts From a Traveller Returning Home to COVID-19

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I have to chuckle to myself every time I begin to write a post on my blog because there in front of me are always the words: “What is on your mind?” If truth be told there is always something on my mind since I suffer from the disease that most of us have today and that is over thinking.

What a loaded question for us bloggers at this time! How could the thing on our minds be anything other than COVID-19 which has taken over our world in such a short time? For the past week we have been daily, if not hourly, bombarded with information on the latest government action based on our need to self-isolate, practice social distancing, and how we can deal with it…or else!

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Taking the Road Less Travelled

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“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled and that has made all the   difference.” –  Robert Frost

A brisk, Sunday morning walk in late November was all I needed to be inspired to write something for my blog which has been sorely neglected these past months. The inspiration to write often hits me on a Sunday especially when I am walking in the midst of nature. One of my favourite walks is the French Basin Trail located a few meters from my apartment in Annapolis Royal.

I had just begun my recent walk when Robert Frost’s quotation from “The Road Not Taken” popped into my head. Why this particular poem, I wondered? I had come to a fork in the trail. Before me lay two different paths meaning I would have to decide which one to take. This was easy because I was familiar with both, so what was the real reason for this poem’s appearance? Interesting how one thought or word can lead to another and another…For me this had to mean something deeper in my life at this time.

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