Continuing to Find Happiness With Vision Loss

I think in life we are always searching. Searching for a new purpose, a new direction, a new car, a new book, a new art project, a new anything.

What are we searching for?

There is always something new out there that clearly has our name on it. Ultimately, the search is an unending one. There is always more, just beyond our reach, just past the current mode of life, that certain thing that we positively just need.

Losing sight...

As that quest fills our days, it is so easy to lose sight of what is really the most important. Our unending search often centers on our daily lives. The things in life that fill us up. It is with a confident sense of self, with firm commitments to our faith, our family, and our friends, that we can attain life answers to everyday issues. This can really be challenging when our declining vision waylays the process.

Through it all

My personal journey has had its moments. Myopic degeneration can ultimately, at any point, alter the way I chose to live my life. Driving will certainly be one of the things I will have to let go - sooner or later. My independent reading will become more dependent on modern technology.

My true passion, my creating art, will require more and more alternative directions to hopefully keep fulling that dream. Through it all, I know full well there is no cure for this disease. I will potentially be unable to do the things that bring me that joy, that happiness, as I know it today.

Finding happiness in new ways

Benjamin Franklin once mused:

"Happiness consists more in the small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.”

So, I will begin a new search, for new happiness. In each day, I will look for the little drops of goodness that I can experience.

Appreciating little things

I will appreciate fully the simple trips in my car, on those bright, clear, sunny days. Today I can do this. I will savor the latest murder mystery book, appreciating every moment spent as I try, yet again to solve this case. I will fully embrace the latest painting I am working on. Catching all the bright and vivid colors across the canvas.

This is my happiness. In this way, I will fill my days with these moments of joy rather than dwell on the what-ifs of tomorrow.

Good fortune and happiness

Looking for the good fortune to be found in life can be a very overwhelming thought process.

It is by breaking it down, into day-to-day moments, that good fortune becomes much more attainable. It is in taking our accomplishments as positive momentum, that our dismal days are brightened even more. It is in relishing those affirmative goals and holding them up as rewards of a job well done that can completely turn a day around.

Taking these pieces of good fortune each day and truly experiencing happiness through it all.