Peggy Lee was one of my favorite vocalists growing up…and I don’t mind dating myself. She sang a song which I occasionally hear still today called “Is That All There Is?” The ballad tells the story of a child who, with every experience she encounters, including the destruction of her home by fire, asks “Is that all there is…is that all there is to a fire?” To go beyond the obvious…beyond what we literally see and experience…and begin to imagine what else that experience might portend is what a child does best. It is what children know and what adults tend to forget. We need to keep in mind that our imagination born out of our unconscious minds is the key to creativity while constantly turning to our conscious thinking powers limits that potential.

I remember my granddaughter at the age of about 10 months at her brother’s birthday party with about 30 mingling guests. She was crawling around on the carpet when a piece of lint caught her eye. She stopped, picked it up albeit with some difficulty, sat down and began to examine it carefully akin to a scientist running an experiment. She spent about a minute in that task then dropped it and went onto her next adventure. Today, she’s fourteen, beautiful, intelligent, inquisitive, is the leading scorer on her hockey team and talks about becoming a veterinarian. She lives in a rural community and has at least six animals she diligently cares for.

Fear and doubt are spawned by our inability to take risks…to experience new things…to gain knowledge. When we choose to stay stuck there…and it is a choice despite its being an unconscious one…life becomes a boring, humdrum experience. There is no sense of adventure or creativity. There is only the plotting and plodding of our next move as we obsessively are preoccupied with not making mistakes so that we will be “perfect”. Of course we know that we can’t accomplish that across the board but some people stay awake at night thinking about ways to accomplish the impossible instead of living and enjoying life to the fullest.

I believe that there are three secrets to a happy and successful life. The first is to always have something to look forward to. This will allow us to view life as an adventure within our control in our need to experience it more and more everyday. The second secret is to bring as much love into our lives as possible. I believe that the key to mental health and happiness is the sense of loving and being loved which is probably why so many songs are written on that topic. The third is to develop and maintain a sense of humor…including our ability to laugh at ourselves. There is nothing more therapeutic that a good, ol’ fashioned belly laugh shared with someone we love. Beyond those three secrets, one can only imagine the possibilities leading up to the question “Is that all there is”?

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