Hmm... How come she always seems to be able to do whatever she wants? How does she always have the money to be able to go out wherever she wants and buy anything she wants? Life isn’t fair! I just don’t get it! How do these people do it? I never seem to have enough time or money to do anything, and it’s frustrating the heck out me! I wish I could just win the lotto…

“Wah! Wah! Wah! You should have stayed home and baked some cookies, some chocolate cookies, with your mommy. Wah! Wah! Wah!” This is what my drill sergeant always sang to us when anyone of us new recruits was whining about something. This jingle may sound funny to you, and it does to me too after all these years. But, as an eighteen-year-old, I hated it! It drove me crazy and made me want to hit somebody!

Well, after all these years, this little annoying jingle has had more positive power and influence over my life than I would have liked to admit to my former drill sergeant. Ironically, this little jingle that drove me so crazy is a really powerful learning tool. It has created empowering lessons that are still in me today and make up the fabric of who I am!

Now that I’m older, and hopefully all the things that go with it like being wiser, more intellectual, and more experienced: things have changed in my life since my nave and Hollywood driven images and expectations of my youth. This great distance I have traveled since my early days has allowed me to really appreciate certain things in this world. For one, it isn’t just my former Fort Benning drill sergeant that understood this nugget of wisdom that the root of all unhappiness comes from wanting more and not being happy with what you have. Over the ages, many people have discovered this. Some would say this knowledge even goes as far back as the enlightened one, the Great Buddha.

Over the last couple of thousand years, Buddha has become a great spiritual leader whose Buddhism religion has spread all over the world. Originally, however, The Buddha, a man who came from abundance, and would have been the envy of today's society, only wanted out of his lifestyle and was on a mission just to be enlightened. He tried many different ways to find enlightenment, such as meditating, fasting or starving himself, living a life of poverty, and talking to as many people as he could. But initially, nothing worked.

Then one day, as Buddha was sitting under a tree contemplating on what to do next, it just dawned upon him. What if he just decided to be happy with what he does have, and not worry about what he doesn’t have? “Wow!” he thought. “This is powerful stuff!” He had just been enlightened and one of his powerful future learnings and teachings of Buddhism had just happened. He called this moment of being totally happy with what one has, and not worried about what one doesn’t have nirvana.

In essence, nirvana is wanting what you have and not wanting what you don’t have.

So teens, in contrast to what you have been brainwashed to by modern media, enlighten yourselves, not with material possessions, but by finding your state of nirvana like the great Buddha did. In this state of mind, you’ll eliminate the root for all the unhappiness in your life. Now that you’re so happy and content... go lead, learn, and lay the way to a better world for all of us. Thanks again in advance.

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