To which my mentor responded, "It's a choice, isn't it?"
Each morning, we wake up with the option of having a good or bad day and though we may not realize it at the time, it's a personal decision made at that very moment. I'm not intending to say people should wake up with the sun shining out of their ass, because who really is a morning person anyways? It's more of...a general outlook. You can wake up and feel sorry for yourself. You can count all of your problems on your fingers and toes. You can bump elbows with a person and choose indecency and forget about any sort of apology. You can whine and complain and participate in petty gossip. These are all factors that aid in making up your mind as to the kind of day it will be.
When I start the day with the choice of it being a bad one, if I have the strength to turn it around, I will ask myself questions.
How can my life be worse? Who can I think of that is having a harder time than I am right now?
But since misery can sometimes feel like the Burj Khalifa weighing over my shoulders, I need to go further:
Can I make a change? If I am unhappy and have been for a long time, what can I do about it?
Making a change within one's life is something that requires a lot of courage. We're creatures of habit. And if suddenly we break the routine of our daily lives, it can be stressful too. But stress is an inevitable part of life. And so is unhappiness. But while unhappiness often pokes it's head into the picture, it really shouldn't outweigh the presence of your happiness. Cliché as it is, the best metaphor I can illustrate for life is comparing it to a roller coaster. So yeah, maybe changing your life (changing your job, your home, your relationships, etc.) may disrupt the ultimate harmony that is your "schedule", and yeah it may take a few weeks of discomfort, but in the long run, that little step outside of your comfort zone, that little leap in a new direction, may be what you need to find your happiness.
In all honesty, I think the reason why I'm writing this is because I'm kind of going through this floating transition period. I have just moved to Copenhagen and have started a new job. I left behind people that were very important to me back home, but I also left behind a workspace that was making me unhappy. I didn't even realize just how unhappy I was until I actually left. I'm living in this new place now and surrounded by new people and it almost doesn't seem real. It feels like I'm living inside a dream in my REM cycle. I'm still adjusting. And for a period of time, it was stressful (packed it all up in one suitcase, thank you very much.) But it's a fresh start and sometimes that can be bliss.
I was talking with my friends last weekend and I told them how happy I was, but that it frightened me. Too often it has happened to me that in what has seemed to be a happy part of my life, something bad happens all too soon. And perhaps that's why I'm constantly comparing life to this roller coaster. Because just when you're up high, at the peak, you fall down faster than you can even breathe. So yeah, I'm terrified that everything right now is too good to be true and that any second now, something awful and horrific will happen.
Thankfully, I have good friends. They told me that I need to let myself be happy. I need to accept and acknowledge this feeling that comes so softly and often is disguised by the bitterness in the world. Human beings hardly ever let themselves be happy. Either they are going through a tough time and are thinking "Man, I can't wait for this all to be over so that I can get a break" or they are in a tough time and remembering how easy they used to have it. So often I look back on my previous years and think "If I had only known how hard my life was going to get." I think that I used to have it so good. But was I thinking that at the time? Hell no! At the time, I told myself "Your life is hard right now, but get through it and it will be fine."
So in summary, we believe happiness to be something either in the past or in the future and that makes it so far away and intangible. The goal that I've given myself as of now, is to accept happiness in, not the past, nor the future, but in my present. Right now.
I am happy.
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| The night I arrived, a rainbow came out. I'm hoping it's a good omen :) |
Pleasantly yours,
Bart
