Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing. It can be even harder to say nothing.
Perspective is hard to gain but easy to lose.
Nothing makes you feel worse than parenting. It’s the best ego destroyer available, even better than marriage. To all the Zen monks in their monasteries: You want to destroy your ego? Try parenting.
The shit that makes us miserable is what keeps us alive. Do you ever think about that when you hear about a celebrity suicide? If that person’s kids weren’t already financially set for life do you think they would have killed themselves? As selfish as we can be as humans, it’s our responsibility to our loved ones that keeps us going in our darkest, most desperate moments. If I didn’t have to have a full time job I’d probably be a drunk. If I had plenty of money and no job to go to…yeah, I’d be drinking. It’s the ongoing “musts” that we complain about that keep us alive.
At some point in our lives will we get to a place where the details of whatever it is that we’re dealing with or feeling miserable about don’t even matter anymore? There’s always going to be something to deal with. Shouldn’t we be able to stop complaining, or at least minimize the complaining, and stop having so many feelings about every little thing and just handle what’s in front of us with some grace?
I was texting with a friend about a difficult week. Difficulties at home and at work. Parenting stuff and just being completely overwhelmed at work and knowing that the company is greedy and soulless. My friend replied that it sounded like a perfect storm. Then he said enjoy it. But the enjoyment part was referring to a beer he was going to drop off. He texted back to clarify that. “Enjoy the beer not the storm.” But being able to enjoy the storm is the secret to life. It’s not a natural way to look at it for most of us. And it takes a lot of effort and practice to be able to do it. Maybe most of us will never get all the way there but we can move the needle and change the way that we perceive the storms in our lives. Even being able to realize, while we are in a storm, that we’re going to get through it and that we can learn and grow and change from what happens in the storm is a big shift. Acknowledging to ourselves, while we’re struggling in a storm, that these are the moments that we learn from is not the same thing as enjoying the storm but it’s a turn away from just suffering. It’s all the cliche stuff about enjoying the journey and the obstacle is the path. Easier said than done, but our lives will be filled with storms. When it rains we get wet. Better to accept that than to be miserable about it.