Hello my friends, my fellow happiness seekers, I have a truth bomb to drop on you, and I want you allow it to absorb into every aspect of your life. Ready?
It’s not that bad.
Let that sink in a minute, ok? Take a deep breath and inhale the meaning of this. Let this be your mantra.
Life is not that bad.
I know, I know, we love to make big deals out of everyday occurrences. As human beings we almost crave the drama. We thrive on comparing our lives with others. As Tania recently wrote, the comparison game, leads only to dissatisfaction and unhappiness. I recently flew with a flight attendant, new to the job, who took delight in re-enacting her personality conflicts with fellow flight attendants and passengers. She should have been an actress the way she’d swing the coffee pot around and stomp her feet and furrow her brow as she told me how the cops had to be called to resolve this and that incident. None of the stories she told to me were all that bad in retrospect. No one lost their life, no weapons were pulled on anyone else, and there was no fistfights in the galley. But, still, for her life was drama central. I could blame it on her age of 23, but the truth is I know many people like this, me included. We tend to make mountains out of anthills.
It’s not that bad.
Women, perhaps because there is so much on their plates, tend to look at the glass half-empty. I certainly do! There are some days when my nearly two year old is beyond naughty. She throws her food on the floor, she throws toys off the balcony and across the room, she hits me, and lies down on the ground when it’s time to leave the park in a fit of tears. I am exhausted and fed up, and I become frazzled. It’s easy to think my life is tough in those moments, and it is tough compared to my carefree days as a 20-something. Then I remind myself of a family friend who has a special needs child. Her child requires 8 hours of physical therapy a day which costs about $1400 a day and requires 4 hours of driving. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for this family and child.
It’s not that bad. Even on your hardest day you don’t have it that bad. And neither do I.
Life, my friends, for the most part, and for the majority of us, is pretty good. If you are able to travel and enjoy happy hours, ride your bike, meet friends for lunch, take a yoga class, read a book, and grocery shop without worrying about how to pay for it, I’d say your life is pretty fantastic. Most of the world is living with struggles, real struggles that don’t include which latte to order or how much should you spend on your child’s birthday. Most of our drama we encounter on a daily basis is self-created. We can eliminate this drama by simply saying no to what doesn’t serve us. Say no to toxic relationships, to toxic food, to jobs that poison our goodwill, and to confrontations no one will win. If you start to open your eyes you’ll see opportunities everywhere.
It’s not that bad.
We love to play the victim, to wallow in the bad feelings. We wait for someone, something to pull us out of it. We wait for the right job, the right love, the right anything to come our way before we think we can begin our lives. Well, friend, here’s another truth bomb: life is happening all around you. Happiness is something we create for ourselves, just as we create our own reality, it doesn’t come from anything external. I’ve met people with so much less than I have who are happier than me, and I have friends who think they’ll be happy if they have what I have. The truth is we all struggle, we all feel pain, and all we need to do is open our eyes to the good in life.
Because, friends, it’s not that bad. Really, ain’t life grand?
