When we hear the word addiction, we usually think of drugs, or alcohol, or perhaps sex. But there is a whole range of addictions that may not be life-threatening but are far more commonplace. In fact, you might not even think of them as addictions, but try the following for size:
Addiction to caffeine
Addiction to being right
Addiction to watching television
Addiction to neediness (also known as codependence)
Addiction to thinking (which means most of us in the Western world)
Addiction to fear (another name for chronic anxiety, panic attacks or catastrophising)
I could go on, but you get the picture. There’s another addiction to add, which I discovered courtesy of the inspirational author and speaker Robert Holden: destination addiction. Now, this doesn’t mean sitting in the back seat of a car and repeatedly saying, “Are we there yet?”, although it could be a symptom of this particular addiction.
No, people who have destination addiction are compulsively trying to get somewhere or something that’s perpetually in the future. As Holden says in his book Success Intelligence, they live in “the not now”.
He continues: “They are addicted to the idea that the future is where success is, happiness is and heaven is. Each passing moment is simply a ticket to get to the future.”
It doesn’t help that destination addiction is written into the American constitution – and thus Western society – in the form of “the pursuit of happiness” – which implies happiness is something to be chased after, only we don’t ever seem to catch up with it.
How many of us go to work and spend all day wishing we could go home? How many people say “thank God it’s Friday”? How many of us are so busy that we don’t have time to appreciate what we actually have? How many of us want more without knowing or questioning why?
Rather than thinking, “When I have a better job/more money/bigger house/different partner, then I will be happy and feel successful,” why not stop the rushing around, be still and reflect on what there is to be grateful for right now in this moment. Then you might find you have enough, and you are enough.
We could all do with heeding the words of poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who said: “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”
Perhaps then you can go into destination rehab and – paraphrasing Thoreau – happiness will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
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