Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Ebb and Flow of Happiness

    I won't pretend to be someone who knows what I am talking about, I simply know what I feel. This is only meant to be cathartic for me and I invite you along for the ride. My intention is full disclosure, a guided tour through a mind full of confusion and uncertainty. A long time ago I realized that the path to enlightenment did not begin with knowledge, but with understanding. The Latin phrase “temet nosce”, meaning “know thyself” became my personal mantra. I'm sure the scholars have plenty to say about it, but for me it meant: to fully understand anything you must first understand yourself.
    When I think back to my youth, especially high school, I cringe. I can't say it was especially terrible for me because I floated by somewhere in the middle. I wasn't bullied much. If people noticed me at all, they just thought I was strange, maybe a little crazy. Strange as I was, I did manage to make some friends. At the time I believed that no one wanted anything to do with me, but I realized later it was my odd behavior that kept people away. Hardly ever speaking, I was a very private person. I liked to observe from afar and take mental notes of people's interactions. Slang and popular fashion trends were completely alien to me.
    I have never been comfortable around other people. Protecting myself like a turtle, retreating at the first sign of threat, I never felt whole because I didn't let anyone see me. I felt completely insane compared to the “normal” but I think we all do. I see now that it's not me, everyone is different. Normal is an illusion, the generally accepted behaviors that all people ascribe to are insane. No one is normal. Looking back I can't understand why anyone would want to feel any other way. The people that don't feel alienated are the strange ones.
    Happiness eluded me for years. I found it a few times but that slippery bastard always made it's escape. All I ever wanted was for someone to love me. Occasionally I had it, but inevitably my awkwardness became too much for anyone to bear and I found myself alone time and again. Continuing throughout my teens and early twenties, the tides of happiness graced my shores only to recede slowly eroding my faith away. Eventually it broke me. I found myself in darkness, drowning every night in self destruction. I turned my back on happiness finding a niche at the bar with my two best friends, alcohol and cigarettes. It didn't take long for the tides of happiness to turn to the tsunami of misery. So much of who I was washed away in the relentless wave. I had given up not only on trying to find happiness, but on life. By some miracle someone came along and pulled me out.
    She loved me as broken as I was, maybe because she was broken too. She became my best friend. We did everything together. We had kids, I found a decent job and things were good for a while. The shores of happiness were mine to stroll once again. They say fate is cruel, I don't have a case to argue. Our happiness was short lived when she became ill. Our story didn't have a fairy tale ending. She passed away last year. Our family broken, the dark shadow of misery looming again overhead. As sad as it made me, this time I didn't let it overwhelm me.
    For most people happiness is cyclical, it comes and goes seemingly as it pleases. Whatever it is that makes us happy is usually something beyond our control, like someone else willingly loving us. Somehow we have been conditioned to believe that we are incomplete if we are alone. I used to believe that myself. Maybe its was the stories with the beautiful princess and the handsome prince we all are familiar with from our childhood. They are mostly the same, boy and girl meet, fall in love, most of the time the only adversity their relationship faces is something unrealistic or intangible like magic or a purely evil entity, and they live “happily ever after”. We let ourselves be brainwashed into thinking this was what to expect from life. As adults we don't remember the emotional roller coaster we experienced hearing these stories as kids, but somewhere deep in our mind it lingers. It's the thing that makes us sabotage our own relationships. Nothing is ever good enough because it doesn't live up to the fantasy of perfect happiness forever. Ideally we all want that happy ending, but almost no one ever gets it.
    There are no princesses locked in towers guarded by dragons, there's no handsome prince scouring the world looking for you. Even if there were, do you really think that they would love you unconditionally forever? Of course not. Unless you are a Haitian witchdoctor or a lobotomist, you are going to have trouble finding someone to be complacent all the time. All of this aside, stop looking for your happiness in someone else as if they are holding some part of you that was removed at birth and you need them to feel happy. The secret to true happiness is in understanding who you are. Stop comparing yourself to everyone else. Learn who you are and why you do the things you do.
    Anything motivated by an outside source is a threat to your happiness. If you dress a certain way because you are worried about how other people perceive you, stop it. If you talk a certain way because you want to fit into a social group, stop it. If your goals are set to please or impress others, stop pursuing them. Get to the root of what you want and how you feel about things. Make changes to be the person you want to be.
    I have embraced that which makes me different. There is no longer any fear of being judged or ridiculed. No matter how alone you may feel someone like you is close at hand. The biggest obstacle is taking off our armor and allowing ourselves to be exposed and vulnerable. When you do, and you let the world see the tumult in you, others will begin to strip their armor and let you see them. If we all let go of our defenses the world would be a better place. Be vulnerable, lower your guard. Do something you normally wouldn't do. Free yourself from the shackles you have let social pressure place on you. Most of us think we are less than we are. Feeling like you are inadequate can be the thing that holds you back. The words of others can only hurt you if you let them. I believe everyone has greatness in themselves. All it takes is finding it and letting it grow.
    These are new revelations for me. I have always believed that happiness was achieving the things that I was told I should want. A family, an education, and a good job. I always hated school and dropped out of my first year of college. There has never been a job that I was happy with for more than a few months, I always felt I could do better. My family suffered a great loss. By the standards I grew up on, I was a complete failure. I believed I could never be happy. Our unhappiness comes from our unrealistic expectations and distorted perceptions. As an adult its time to clean out the cobwebs of childhood fantasies and see the world as it is.
    The happiest people I know are the ones who love themselves and see anything outside of themselves as a bonus. If I said I was happy I would be lying, but you can be sure I am on the right path.


Friday, November 15, 2013

Love is a Four Letter Word



"If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear the pain of loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater."
  • Dragonlance Chronicles: Dragons of Winter Night

   We are human and we love. The fear of rejection, or failing at a relationship has often prevented me from taking a chance at saying how I feel. I know now that the wonder of what could have been outlasts the pain of rejection, but I still feel apprehension when I know I should be honest about my feelings. I have no fear of the world tuning it's back on me because it isn't personal. To be unabashed and bare my bleeding heart to one person and ask them if they want to walk this far from perfect road with me is absolutely terrifying. To have the perfect person in your sights and fail to pull the trigger is the kind of thing that keeps you up at night.
   The old saying, to have loved and lost is better than to have never loved at all, is a double edged sword. I have loved and I have lost vastly. The memory of being in love is a warm place to curl up and relive, but the pain of loss is a black abyss so deep and unforgiving that some never find their way out. If you do manage to survive the loss of love you are left with the knowledge of how love can lift you to great heights. You crave it, like a junkie craves his drug of choice. Sometimes we try to force ourselves to love someone because we want to experience that lightness again. I think most of us know how that ends, regret and doubt at the least. More demons to haunt you in the abyss.
   Everyone has loved someone at some point in their life. Some people are still happy in love, as rare as it seems. The rest of us are envious. We all imagine things working out perfectly, but often we don't take into account the fact that most people don't want the same things. We compromise and make sacrifices. Some fight harder than others. There comes a time however, when you find yourself beating a dead horse. Saying goodbye isn't as hard as admitting to yourself that it's no longer worth the effort. That's the part that really hurts, when you've put so much in and gotten so little in return. You may wonder how you could have been so diluted, yet you still feel something had to have been there for you to let yourself be so vulnerable.
   Some would say that love fades. Years may have grown between you or changes have become a wedge, but you still hold on to that lingering love that made you willing to do anything to be with them. No matter how damaged it may seem, nor how irreparable... love never fades. The bonds that keep us together often fray or rot and sadly sometimes they break, but the anchor to which they were once tied remains, like a signpost in our heart. Some bonds are so strong that when they break they fracture our hearts. In time the heart heals with a scar in place of a deep fissure. No amount of trying can erase that part of us, though we wish we could.
   Then there is the love that never was, or the one that got away. The person you were so good with but you couldn't make it work. Whether it was circumstance or timing that got in the way, you still have lingering feelings for them. Maybe you are in a place where you would want to revisit those feelings, but inevitably the other person is unavailable. You don't say anything because you fear the only thing worse than rejection: learning that that person feels the same way, but something keeps them at arms length. I guess it doesn't really matter when you have waited too long to say it.
   Love is the varnish of our hearts, it brings out the beauty within and protects us from decay. Over time the wear of daily rigors strip away the enamel of love. I believe that nothing can completely sever a connection made by love, if it is real. The moment your eyes met that unspoken bond was forged, long before the words were a fleeting thought. When someone you love ceases to be that person and you cannot recognize them anymore, when you know that bond is breaking, that first moment is still yours. It wasn't a lie you let yourself believe. That piece of your soul that you gave up to love will always hold the same fondness you remember. The hardest part of love is letting go.
   I am not saying love is always tragic. In fact I believe that when you find a way to make it work, love is amazing. The best times of my life were when I had someone to love who loved me just as much. Losing that love left me feeling like the world was bleak and somehow the universe was punishing me for past maleficence. Despite the isolated, drowning loneliness that I have felt, I still have faith that I will love again. I know now that I am older and wiser that love is a perk, not the goal in life. Someone close to me made me realize that happiness comes from within. When you stop seeking it elsewhere, look inside yourself and mature spiritually, the person you become will draw in the person who will embody all the things you sought.
Like all good things, it won't be easy but the honey is worth a few stings.
Love is a four letter word.... so is hope. For my money, there are no two greater motivators.


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