I regret that it takes a lifetime to learn how to live.
Does it really take an entire life to learn how to live? If so , why bother having an entire life at all. If you spend the whole length of it discovering something you never get any use out of, why work so hard to discover it? I briefly consider the options, before my mind is already spinning ahead into the abyss of thoughts swirling around in my brain.
I am a writer. As a writer, I tend to think more than is necessary about everything. I notice little things, and let them get under my skin to the point that I am so aggravated by them I am nearly batty. The year 2011 passed by with considerably more excitement than previous years. In its wake, I was left pondering whether or not I did the right thing in all the moments in which I could have said something to someone and didn't, or decided to say something to someone in a moment when perhaps I should have stayed silent. The more I thought about this, the more unhappy I became. And the unhappier I was, the more I realized that sometimes trying to think about what is making me unhappy will only make me more unhappy. But other times, it is necessary otherwise emotions become buried too deep and come out in other less intellectually fueled and more primitive ways.
In the past year, 2011, I have been involved in more PR crisises than a journalist with diarrhea. In retrospect, the second half of the year was considerably better then the first half. Or maybe it was only the middle section that was really great. Anyways, looking back, I noticed a pattern in all the times I was disgruntled or miffed or irked, or simply pissed off: during all those times, I was thinking. Thinking is not, inherently, a bad thing when seen in a "grand scheme of things" light. But up close, it was always the same. It was not enough to say that the source of my depression came from my thinking. Specifically, it was how I was thinking that ultimately dragged me down.
The Happiness Project is my life-changing epiphany. By changing the way I think about things, little by little, I can become a happier person. And hopefully, by being happier, I can learn to appreciate life as it happens, to live while I'm alive, and to treat everyone with compassion. It won't be easy, living happily never is. But there are three sides to everything: the good, the bad, and the truth. What is easy is to focus on the bad side. What's also easy, is to decide to see only the good and ignore the bad as though it doesn't exist and will go away if you simply burry your head in the sand long enough. The hardest thing to do is to know what is true, and decide to see the good in the bad, while acknowledging the fact that the negativity exists. Hard, but necessary.
For each month, I am going to set a goal; sleep better, stress less, be nicer, spend more time with people I care about and may have unintentionally hurt... etcetera. Every day, I will write about this experience and see how it affects my life. And with any luck, it won't take me a lifetime to learn how to live, but that whatever life lessons I get out of this Happiness Project can be applied for the rest of my life.
Semper Fidelis,
Rae
No comments:
Post a Comment