JORGE RODRIGUES SIMAO

Do you want an exotic sports car? Think it will make you happy? Maybe. Maybe not. A former sports car owner remarked, "The two best days in my life were when I bought my Alfa Romeo and when I sold my Alfa Romeo." This man is not the only person to have wanted a certain dream car, obtained it, and found out that it was the car from hell. There may be something positive in every negative event but there is usually something negative in every positive event. Best-selling author Richard Bach wrote, "Our disasters have been some of the best things that ever happened to us. And what we swore was blessings have been some of the worst." As Bach implies, the negative in a positive event often turns out to be big enough to make the positive event something that you would rather not have happened to you.

Although this is a hard concept to accept, many of the things you want will give you more problems than you can ever imagine. In other words, be careful about what you wish for, and are working toward, because you may get it. Saint Theresa of Avila offered some food for thought: "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." Truth be told, many people have found that getting the ideal job, the ideal mate, or some other desire turned out to be the worst thing that could have ever happened to them.

For this reason it is a good idea to give some consideration to the idea that the things you want may not be the things you need for a happy and satisfying life. For instance, if it's a promotion you are hoping for, let the words of Robert Frost be a warning: "By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day." Indeed, many people have had their dreams become nightmares when they finally got elevated to a job with more responsibility.

A big part of the reason that we are not as happy in life as we would like to be is that solving what appears to be a major problem in our lives often creates many more problems. This phenomenon has many variations. Our biggest concern may be that we are single and would like to be married. Once we solve our problem by hitching up with the ideal mate, some of us eventually end up agreeing with some of the insightful things said about marriage such as "Marriage is lonelier than solitude," "Marriage is death to romance," and "Marriage is grounds for divorce."

Another problem may be our lack of enough clothes. Once it is solved, we don't have enough closet space and can't decide on what to wear. In fact, the more clothes, the harder the decision. No wonder former CBS news journalist Eric Sevareid concluded, "The chief cause of problems is solutions."

Since ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have espoused the idea that it's often a blessing that we don't get what we pray for. "When the gods are angry with a man, they give him what he asks for," suggests an old Greek proverb. In the same vein Richard J. Needham stated that "God punishes us mildly by ignoring our prayers and severely by answering them." Still more, the famous poet and sage Rumi wrote, "Some things that don 't happen keep disasters from happening."

Preposterous as it may seem, you may want to thank God or the universe that all your wants and needs have not been answered. What appears like it would be Heaven on Earth may seem more like hell on Earth when you actually get it or experience it. Instead of lamenting about your situation in life, give some serious thought to all the severe problems that you have been spared due in part to the fact that you have not got some of the things you dearly wanted.