#Monomad Challenge - The gates are open

Good evening, #Monomad friends

Here is my entry for the #monomad contest by @brumest and @monochromes.

Many of the greatest joys we will ever experience during our brief time on earth—and I’m not saying they’re all of them, but for me they really are all of them—are those that didn’t cost us a penny, or those we achieved by purchasing a certain object, ticket, or even attaining a certain social status based on our professional class or influence in society.

Notice that among the peoples who report the highest levels of happiness in the world, many live on less than $15 a day. Not that poverty is necessary to learn how to seek out life’s true pleasures, but poverty does lead us to be open to seeking out other opportunities. Extreme poverty, of course, only leads to despair… and from despair to madness or crime is just a small step.

But when we don’t have all the resources, when we have to search for them, we end up being more attentive to more interactions, to a greater number of people. We don’t turn down an opportunity to interact, and in those interactions we end up finding something new… And it might even be something we’ve seen before.

Just like a public garden, life presents itself this way. Not that it ever closes its iron gates. They’re always open. They may not be wide open, but all you have to do is look calmly, and sometimes, even those doors that seem closed to us are just ajar.

And an experience that at first seemed impossible for us to have ends up becoming something that, in the end, can even lift us to another place.

Don’t let an apparent disappointment permanently shut a door that was never closed except in our minds.