If you’re like most people, you have a few core aspirations.

Maybe it’s something external, like a job that truly moves your soul.  Maybe it’s a deeply loving relationship.  Maybe it’s a family and raising your kids to be beautiful human beings.  Maybe it’s a large bank account, a life of travel and adventure, or perhaps just a comfortable life.

Maybe it’s more internal, like living each day with love and compassion.  Maybe it’s enlightenment or truth.  Maybe it’s to live simply and deeply.  Maybe it’s to bring mindfulness and presence into your every step.

For a moment, try considering the difference between your life now and the life you aspire to.

With that difference in mind—what if you never met your aspirations?  What if absolutely nothing about your life would ever change?  What if how you felt today or the past week or year was more or less how you would feel the rest of your life?

Simply put: what if this was it?

If you’re like most people, and if you’re honest with yourself, this is a somewhat terrifying thought.  We are highly conditioned to seek a “better future.”  We are taught perseverance and hope.  We are educated to dream big and go for it.  We are constantly instructed that this isn’t good enough.

Here’s a truth to contemplate very deeply: happiness will never come in the future—rather, it will come the very day that you are deeply at peace with this being it.

My gateway to actually living from this place has been meditation practice.

I sit still not in order to be highly aware, get peace of mind or attain any exalted states.  I just sit and allow myself to be as I am today.  I give myself permission to not be any better.  I drop away the overt efforting and the seeking of some specific result.  I just sit there and let reality happen.

And yet, I still have my aspirations.

I don’t just collapse into a vortex of apathy and non-doing.  In meditation, I aspire towards awareness and awakening.  In life, I aspire towards kindness, discernment and sincerity.  I still have a sense of direction.  The difference is that having come to a very powerful peacefulness with this being it, I can move towards my aspirations without being bothered too much by the results, one way or the other—how refreshing!

There’s a lot to chew on here, but I encourage you to let the following question linger in your soul until you can answer affirmatively:

Could I be truly happy if this was it?