The Thrill is Gone

I was reading my daily entry from A Year With C.S. Lewis a couple of days ago and I came across this passage about what happens when you make thrill seeking your focus or your diet, which really got me thinking:

"It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: it is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go--let it die away--go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow--and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and few and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy."

I definitely know people who just live for the 'next thing' and miss life as it passes them by; it always saddens me because they refuse to learn to be content with where/who they are. I think that there are times where I have fallen into this trip, thinking to myself that I'll be 'truly happy' when I get to a certain stage in life, be it education, job, marital situation, owning property, or whatever. I am slowly learning to discipline myself to enjoy the present and try to have 'the eyes to see and the ears to hear' what God is trying to teach me through whatever is happening to me in the moment.