The good life is not the same thing as the curated life. The good life is a cultivated life. It takes pursuit and development. It takes nurturing and fostering. The good life doesn’t just happen, either. We often expect the fruit of our life to grow without watering the seedling or pruning the vines. Then we are surprised when the fruit doesn’t come.
Society encourages us to first be concerned for our own individual rights before we think of others, to focus on what we feel is rightfully ours, what we deserve. We equate the pursuit of justice on our terms with the pursuit of righteousness. We make demands. We love to take stands. We use our energies to make sure we are served rather than using that energy to serve others.
If you do these things your life will be filled with anger, bitterness, and resentment. But if you focus on doing what is right, and you leave room for mercy, and you give grace instead of getting revenge, you will be cultivating a life of happiness and love – a good life, no matter your circumstances.
Be humbled by your smallness. Take yourself with a grain of salt. Do what you can to add to this world with the little time we have instead of seeing what you can take from it.
The beauty of the good life, the abundant life, is that when you do take the time to do the work: to plant and water, to prune, and to remove the rocks and thorns and pests, the results are multiplicitious. Start with a little, give it care, and you’ll end up with more than enough to go around when it comes time to harvest.
Stepping Back 