Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

In the next few minutes, by the time I finished recording this, I may end up taking back something that I've been saying for many years and firmly stood by that I don't miss people places or things. Allow me to explain

why that has been my truth for so long and how I'm working on reconciling something

I've recently noticed that might negate my previous point of view.

The word missing implies that something is, well, missing, that something is not whole or complete because it lacks a missing component.

It's a mindset of deficiency, insufficiency, deficit or scarcity.

Perhaps you can already understand why after years of centering my attention on the abundance in life

and being grateful for what's available rather than focusing on what isn't, I've essentially trained myself to not only see every moment and circumstance as whole and complete, but to honor it as such.

Every second of each day is a gift.

Friendships and relationships are to be treasured while they last.

Health, youth, everything is so temporary, but that briefest of moments is everything.

To think of what's lacking or even entertain comparing a moment to some ideal version of it we have in our heads or a memory of something from the past is to take the present moment for granted in fact to not be in it at all.

So when people ask me if I miss a good friend or relative who has passed away for example,

or even if I miss Hawaii after living there for 10 years, my answer is always the same. I think of it fondly and I have great memories, but I refuse

to say my current life is incomplete without it or somehow subpar without someone in it. Doing so would be dismissive of the gifts in my life today and I

believe taking things for granted is our greatest downfall. So I focus on what and who is

in my life and I celebrate each breath rather than spend a moment entertaining the idea

that my life is somehow incomplete.

We believe whatever we tell ourselves and life would be a real downer if we start believing

that it's missing something. I'm that cold or

insensitive about it. I've just gotten really good at shifting my perspective

toward what's in front of me rather than what's behind. It took some practice of

...