Don’t Miss Your Bliss

Yesterday I stumbled across a poem written about this thing we call “Bliss”.  It’s something we all like and we all want in our lives. We try to pursue it as best we can even though it does elude us much of the time.  I read it with great interest because I’ve gone after bliss many times and experienced bliss at times in my life but haven’t had near as much of it as I’ve wanted.  Here’s the poem. I hope you like it as much as I did and that you find it’s helpful to you too in your pursuit of bliss.

BLISS

How many years do we waste as we search for this?
Contentment, peace of mind, a state of bliss.

Young men work to build their bodies strong.
Attach themselves to vanity and stay too long.

Finally, they move on–but now it’s assets, goals and stuff.
They’re so competitive, work so hard and play so rough.

But the end is justified by the means.
Yet when they arrive, the prize is not what it seems.

What have I missed? My wife, my kids, my life is amiss.
Is it now too late to follow my bliss?

What’s it all worth if ‘in the getting’ I lose my soul?
Please let me get it back, the price is too great a toll.

But sometimes life will let you do just that,
change roles, reverse direction, and switch your hat.

For we all must learn in the proper time and season,
for wisdom comes with patience, suffering, and for a reason.

Bliss rarely comes when one is young,
but neither is it guaranteed from an old man’s tongue.

Its secret is buried and is man’s greatest foe.
Simply put, it’s the taming of the ego.

Ego locks you out of your bliss.
God’s one test you best not miss.

But it takes almost a lifetime to get that peace of mind.
Here’s the secret–you don’t have to be right, just be kind.

By the way, the author of this poem, and I had totally forgotten this, is little ol’ me.  I wrote this back in 1998 and as I read all these years later I was quite surprised that it struck me as pretty good. Well, it must have been more what they call ‘inspiration’ because it was too good to come just from my brain.