The principle of non-grasping

I see a lot of disappointment about life in many of the people who come to talk to me. It's sad because our culture has set them up to believe that they can only be happy if they succeed according to some goal they have set for themselves in the past. In meditative language, that's called an attachment to outcome. But life doesn't move along in sequence according to a previously charted plan. It unfolds on its own terms:

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson