I have my suspicions about time.
It seems to me that we pay too much attention to time. After all, isn't it just an arbitrary concept humans have superimposed onto our species to keep the machinery flowing smoothly? We need a way to measure time, of course. We need a way to mark passages, to count our days, a method of remembering what happened when.
But the timeline of an individual has a different flow. I always expected my life to follow a certain chronology, a pattern established generations ago of where I should be at any given age. And when it didn't happen exactly according to the connect-the-dots ideas I'd absorbed throughout my life, it scared me. Where had I gone wrong? Why hadn't I secured the trappings of my age yet? Why didn't I feel twenty-five, thirty...Oh God, am I thirty already? Thoughts of failure hung around me like a tired ghost. I tossed at night. I waited for something to happen.
And something did. I threw away some of my ideas - and as Julia Cameron wrote, nothing dies harder than a bad idea. As some of those ideas finally turned to dust, my life began to take a new shape. Not the shape I'd expected, not the conventional 1 2 3 checklist, but my own red carpet through time, unfurling in front of me. As I got older, my life got younger. The things I'd least enjoyed about myself became my greatest assets.
Time, it seems, is not my enemy any longer.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
A Beginning: On Happiness
As we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.
- Blaise Pascal
There never seems to be a logical point for beginning anything, so I'll start this blog in medias res, right here in the middle of my mental swamp.
I had cause to think a great deal about happiness the past few days - the nature of happiness, why some of us achieve it and why some never seem to so much as taste it. I've come to the following conclusions:
Happiness means you've let other people off the hook. If you're happy, if you allow yourself to fully dive into positive emotions, you can no longer use your misery as proof that others have wronged you. You can't accuse them of making you unhappy anymore, and you lose your case against them. Having something to show for your suffering is satisfying on some level, and even necessary at times - we have to go through our anger and grief and pain to reach the other side where clarity becomes an option. But when happiness comes back into view and can once again be grasped, you have to wave goodbye to the grim pleasure of blaming others. You survived. You cannot point the finger at them anymore. Choosing to remain miserable keeps other people on trial for having harmed you. You remain as judge, jury, and star witness to the prosecution. You have to decide if a guilty verdict is even possible, and whether or not it will really bring the justice and peace you seek. Be your own vindicator and declare a mistrial. It doesn't make what happened to you right. It doesn't declare it null and void. It simply frees you from the shackles of holding them accountable for the way you feel.
Happiness is so often a choice, one requiring determination. Sinking into our own inner muck is comfortable and easy. Rising above it requires effort. It is essentially a form of personal responsibility, as bland as that concept seems. It requires constantly seeking the proverbial silver lining in circumstances beyond our control. It's work.
This is just one set of reflections on the subject matter.
- Blaise Pascal
There never seems to be a logical point for beginning anything, so I'll start this blog in medias res, right here in the middle of my mental swamp.
I had cause to think a great deal about happiness the past few days - the nature of happiness, why some of us achieve it and why some never seem to so much as taste it. I've come to the following conclusions:
Happiness means you've let other people off the hook. If you're happy, if you allow yourself to fully dive into positive emotions, you can no longer use your misery as proof that others have wronged you. You can't accuse them of making you unhappy anymore, and you lose your case against them. Having something to show for your suffering is satisfying on some level, and even necessary at times - we have to go through our anger and grief and pain to reach the other side where clarity becomes an option. But when happiness comes back into view and can once again be grasped, you have to wave goodbye to the grim pleasure of blaming others. You survived. You cannot point the finger at them anymore. Choosing to remain miserable keeps other people on trial for having harmed you. You remain as judge, jury, and star witness to the prosecution. You have to decide if a guilty verdict is even possible, and whether or not it will really bring the justice and peace you seek. Be your own vindicator and declare a mistrial. It doesn't make what happened to you right. It doesn't declare it null and void. It simply frees you from the shackles of holding them accountable for the way you feel.
Happiness is so often a choice, one requiring determination. Sinking into our own inner muck is comfortable and easy. Rising above it requires effort. It is essentially a form of personal responsibility, as bland as that concept seems. It requires constantly seeking the proverbial silver lining in circumstances beyond our control. It's work.
This is just one set of reflections on the subject matter.
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