I have done the military, university, church, built fibreglass canoes and directed summer camps. Now I write and edit - and I do so because it is my dream job.
I see it as a way to change the world - to bring opinions and beauty and ideas to the fore in a way that captivates imagination and sets minds on their own journey of discovery.
But... and I do not say this lightly... it is harder than I thought it would be. This is a dream job dammit, life should just feel like cloud nine, everything should fall into place... I am doing something so few people get the chance to do and... I am blowing it.
Not that I cannot turn this ship around - but I have been getting lazy, sad, lonely, all of the things I have felt before in other jobs and other places - and so I am not putting my all into it like I was three months ago.
I am nothing if not introspective, however, and so I am offering this little discussion as a way to help those of you who find yourselves in my shoes (which, one day or another, is all of you)
Life is never going to be what you wish it was. Sure, there are days, weeks, months - for the lucky amongst us perhaps even years when things will be perfect. But that too will be fleeting. Life is real - and that means there is pain. Life includes loss. Life includes unhappiness. Life includes idiots cutting you off at the intersection.
I personally keep forgetting this. Perhaps I am the only one. Perhaps you are okay with this and understand the balance, the yin-yang nature of the universe. And so I find myself feeling that the world is letting me down and perfection is escaping only me. Everyone else is happy, right? Everyone else had the perfect day, right?
Life is never going to be what you wish it was. Sure, there are days, weeks, months - for the lucky amongst us perhaps even years when things will be perfect. But that too will be fleeting. Life is real - and that means there is pain. Life includes loss. Life includes unhappiness. Life includes idiots cutting you off at the intersection.
I personally keep forgetting this. Perhaps I am the only one. Perhaps you are okay with this and understand the balance, the yin-yang nature of the universe. And so I find myself feeling that the world is letting me down and perfection is escaping only me. Everyone else is happy, right? Everyone else had the perfect day, right?
Luckily I have people in my life who call me on this bullshit way of seeing reality. But I wonder why I keep getting pulled back in. Do you ever get sucked back into the depression of seeing life as not fair? Do you ever start counting all the bad things that happen and forget about the good? Probably. I think we all do. But we need someone to come along and smack us upside the head and remind us that we are being babies.
So this is your wake up call. No one owes you anything. Life is not a bed of roses. The rain is going to fall... and.... it will be okay. Cause there is a rainbow. There is a flower garden. People will randomly do nice things for you... but you are responsible...
So get going. Don't just coast through this upcoming week - focus on making it better!
A few years ago I cut of part of my thumb in a run-in with a table saw. I remember clearly looking a the part of my thumb lying on the ground thinking how lucky I was - I could have cut off all of my fingers or even my whole hand. Life is "how you see it" - not good, not bad, not perfect or imperfect - simply how you see it. The challange then is to see differently, things need not change, just the mental view we have of them.
ReplyDelete"“If you say you can or you can't you are right either way”
― Henry Ford
Terry