Stable positive feeling. That is what we are all chasing. It drives greed in all forms. Thwarted, it produces anger and hate. Fear arises from the contemplation of losing any such feeling which might be ours for the moment. It drives thrill seeking, which is the quest for continual new thrills, but which is the same in that.
Spirituality is about finding something–God, the Buddha Nature, the Tao–underneath all this, which is constant in some meaningful way.
I watch myself. I am radically inconstant. I have lists, and I do reasonably well getting through them, but not without lots of twists and turns.
I never know what is next, because I ALLOW what is next. There is a part of me which is always trying to force feeling on all situations, but I think just about every part of me has figured out that makes me miserable.
But it is so hard to jump that chasm, to take that leap into the wind– Hard, not impossible, and not without immediate and clear benefits.
And it’s not a one time thing. It is a learned habit, done continually daily when mastered.
Edit: I know it is stunningly obvious that, by and large, most of us want to be happy and to avoid pain. Still, it helps to rephrase things in various ways, as it amounts to a variety of perspectives, and sometimes you see things you did not expect.