I have two opposing thoughts about pain. Most of the time I say to myself, “A little pain never hurt anybody”. But occasionally I contradict myself with something short and sweet: “Pain hurts”.
Wisdom from our waiter on our anniversary lunch date: “Sometimes the only way out is in.”
It occurs to me, when dealing with other humans, that everyone wants to drive the car. But everyone can’t drive the car. In a car there is only one steering wheel and one set of pedals. So everyone who is not behind the wheel needs to just sit there, accept that they are not in control and shut the fuck up. This advice applies to every other situation that you find yourself in when you are not in control. Don’t attempt to tell someone how to do their job if things aren’t going your way. Truly, it is not helpful. Leave the driving to the driver.
If you love Oreos but haven’t tried the Coke flavored Oreos yet, what are you waiting for? Don’t worry about the red dye, I’m sure it’s fine. They are curiously strange yet appealing.
Humans are freakers. Instead of seeing what’s in front of us and believing what we see, we believe the worries, stories, and drama of our minds. Or worse, we believe the lies and manipulations of other crazy humans. We humans require a lot of handholding too. So often our initial reaction is panic. Why? What good does panic do us? Especially when the stimulus is usually such a small thing. Panic does not help us accomplish what needs to be done. In that way, it is similar to the noise in our mind, just another distraction stirring up drama, that has little to do with reality, as it distracts us from the task at hand.
I’ve probably mentioned this lyric before from “Take Me Home” by Concrete Blonde. “Life is beautiful and terrible and strange.” Today, my friend, Chris wrote, “It’s all sad, weird, and beautiful at the same [time].” He sums up our whole existence in so few words.
I find myself spiraling back around to the same few ideas. I come back from a different angle with more experiences under my belt. Maybe even with a little better understanding but I’m still working on the same few ideas over and over again. < hold that thought > I am human thus I complain. I haven’t liked complaining for a long time but I still do it. I’ve tried to change my approach to complaining though. Instead of just dumping out negativity, I try to make it entertaining for my audience. Either giving my listener a chance to laugh at me or laugh at what I’m complaining about. But it’s really still not a good use of my time. There is a difference between complaint and critique but even an accurate, well-worded critique doesn’t usually produce results. The idea here that I keep spiraling back to is that things are what they are. The circumstances we find ourselves in unfold in ways that are largely out of our control. Do we complain or do we accept & adjust? The world isn’t here for us and it’s a narrow point of view to think that it is. We feel pain because we want our circumstances to be different than they are. We don’t often have control over the circumstances but we do have control over the gap between what we want and what happens. We can narrow that gap and lessen our emotional response to our circumstances. We start each day with a certain amount of time and energy in the tank. Spending some of that time and energy on complaining is not a wise transaction.