There Is No Scorecard

The Buddha said we should reflect often on the fact that we don’t know when and how we’re going to die. You could die in your sleep, choke on food, or contract an aggressive disease. Yet however you go, you will not bring your life to any kind of completion before you do.

But then the Buddha has us do a very different kind of reflection. Reflect, he says, on the blessing of this moment. For if all you were able to do, before you passed, was to develop love and compassion and gratitude and inner peace for just a single moment, that would be worth a great deal. Because happiness, of course, is only ever right now.

This reflection is liberating, but can also be troubling. When we realize that happiness exists only in the present moment, it raises a lot of questions about how we’re living. You might ask: Why am I putting so much emphasis on my job? Why am I agonizing about finding a partner or having kids? Why am I holding on so tightly to past disappointments and resentments?

Those are all excellent questions. Wherever we go, the mind tends to bring along an imaginary scorecard. We miss the point of happiness, in large part, because we’re trying to keep score. We may put time into self-improvement so our exes will be sorry they left us. We may put time into building careers so our parents will give us the approval we never got from them. We may even put time into meditation so we can check a box that says, “Look, I’m disciplined after all.”

But there is no scorecard. We do not come to happiness by racking up points, but by letting go of our attachment to needing to get something or be someone. What remains when we let go is not mediocrity, but the heart’s freedom: the ability to come and go, engage or not engage, as we are truly called to do.