Thursday, June 5, 2014

Glass Empty and Full

Yesterday was just bad.  It's over and I'm thankful, but it was bad. 

As I pulled into my office parking lot, I cried for twenty minutes in my car because I was so overwhelmed by responsibility.  The fact that I had somewhere to be and things to pay and to put food inside of my body so I was a functioning human being was just something I couldn't deal with or comprehend.  To get to work, I need to put gas in my car, in order to pay for that gas, I need to work to make money, but I seemingly never make enough money and I'm working all the god damn time to pay for past college experiences and a phone which I mostly use for Spotify.  It's all too much sometimes.  All the time.  Every day, it's too much. 

The day never got better.  I tried, I really did.  I tried with all my strength to make it a better day.  I even had my favorite lunch... which is a handful of wasabi soy almonds. I had an afternoon coffee!  But the reality is... some days are just bad and the only thing that'll help is sleeping it off.  Or drinking and drugs and stuff, but well, that never really helps.  I don't know, I've never done drugs because I'm a baby.  Maybe they help.  It just looks like they're helping everything but people's mental state, skin and teeth. 

I was talking to my friend Rob and he said, "I'm always sad, I just get happy sometimes."  Any other day, I'd respond with "THAT'S NOT GOOD! LET'S GET YOU HAPPY!" But he's totally right. We shouldn't strive SO HARD to be happy every single moment of every single day.  Some days/hours/moments totally suck and that's going to happen, we can't expect to be smiling through those moments.  In fact, I'm terrible at hiding emotions so I definitely won't be smiling.  Striving for total happiness is like striving for total perfection and that is impossible.  We're not built that way.  Especially those of us from Irish descent.  We were born to be miserable potato fans.  

As all of these feelings were happening and the bad day was being had, I read this post on A Cup of Jo and it couldn't have been more perfect timing.  Fate, everyone, it's REAL.  Here's the quote: 

I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that—I don't mind people being happy—but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It's a really odd thing that we're now seeing people saying "write down three things that made you happy today before you go to sleep" and "cheer up" and "happiness is our birthright" and so on. We're kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position. It's rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don't teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, "Quick! Move on! Cheer up!" I'd like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word "happiness" and to replace it with the word "wholeness." Ask yourself, "Is this contributing to my wholeness?" and if you're having a bad day, it is.

Bad days are a-okay.  They're not the best things in the world... but we should allow ourselves to have them every now and then and realize that THEY ALWAYS END.  Hallelujah, they always end!  And if they don't, well, at least there's flavor blasted goldfish. 

I really love flavor blasted goldfish. 

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