Nothing Outside Me Can Fill Me Up

This post was automatically translated by AI from the Japanese original.

When I’m feeling down or tired, that’s exactly when I want to go out to a café.

The first and second times, I feel “Ahh, this is delicious 😍” and it’s a relief.

It’s a good way to refresh.

But once I get used to it, it turns into:

I feel bad → I’ll just go to a café.

Out of habit.

Then I sit there scrolling my phone, drinking coffee, and thinking, “Huh? I’m spending time at a café, but my mood hasn’t changed as much as I expected 😅”

Blissful coffee time ☕️

What I wanted was

the feeling of my mood lifting, even a little,

but I forgot to savor that feeling,

and I tie it hastily to something visible or an action: “If I drink coffee ☕️ at a café, I’ll feel better, right?”

I wanted to let myself take it easy.

I wanted to help my feelings relax.

To grant that wish,

the action of drinking coffee came up.

Then I forget what I really want, and if I’m only aware of the action of drinking coffee,

I skip the part where I savor the feeling I was after.

Using things outside me

to lift my mood

or to please myself isn’t a bad thing.

But

to start from the outside thing,

and to think my mood can’t lift without relying on it

feels kind of mismatched…

I think I’m handing my power over to the outside, thinking “I can’t be fulfilled without something outside me.”

As I’ve been writing this, I remembered Lesson 128 of A Course in Miracles. (A Course in Miracles is a book of mind training that takes apart the ego and changes how you see the world. It’s super difficult, but I started reading it when I studied psychology.)

Lesson 128 teaches “The world I see holds nothing that I want.”

In my own words,

I think it means that what I clutch onto in this society, thinking it’s valuable, is nothing but junk.

I cling to the belief that

eating delicious food,

or earning lots of money

would make me happy.

It’s the same as believing coffee will make me happy.

But coffee raises my blood sugar; it doesn’t truly save me.

When nothing I do lifts my mood,

it might be best to give up and say,

“There’s nothing in the outside world that I want.”

When I stop searching outside,

I remember that it starts from within.

Maybe now is a chance to reset the me who wants to cling to things I can see.