Lesson 19, reason #469 = There is no such thing as a perfect job or a perfect relationship. Lesson 20, reason #470 = There is such a thing as an unhealthy job, as well as an unhealthy relationship. Lesson 21, reason #471 = A bad work environment is an obstacle to avoid. Lesson 22, reason #472 = A difficult time in a relationship is a learning experience. -- I want to stress that these are lessons I've learned, and they apply to my unique set of circumstances. Over the course of the last year Mr. Wonderful and I have come full circle, and things have never been more solid and, therefore, better. But that is only because he decided that he, too, wanted to make this work. If he hadn't decided that, I would have continued on without him. Many people have had to make that difficult decision, and I don't envy them. I wish them peace, love and grace in return. -Me Add Comment It's a shame that it's not until the end of this year that I've stumbled across and begun to read Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. But, now that I have, I can tell you that she more eloquently sums up lessons 16 - 18 than I do, so I'll do as I promised and let her words speak for themselves. Lesson 16, reason #466: "The days are long, but the years are short." [Think about it. And then think about it again and again...] Lesson 17, reason #467: "I grasped two things - I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasn't going to change unless I made it change. In that single moment, with that realization, I decided to dedicate a year to trying to be happier." Lesson 18, reason #468: Life is one long, continuous happiness project. Okay, so those are my words. Here are more of hers: "I needed to think about this. How could I discipline myself to feel grateful for my ordinary day? How could I set a higher standard for myself as a wife, a mother, a writer, a friend? How could I let go of everyday annoyances to keep a larger, more transcendent perspective? I could barely remember to stop at the drugstore to buy toothpaste--it didn't seem very realistic to think that I could incorporate these high aims into my everyday routine... I had a brief vision of myself living for a month on a picturesque, windswept island, where each day I would gather seashells, read Aristotle and write in an elegant parchment journal. Nope, I admitted, that's not going to happen. I needed to find a way to do it here and now. I needed to change the lens through which I viewed everything familiar." Yes, yes, yes. Amen and amen and amen. -Me You Can't Fight Fire With Fire. 05/04/2012
Lesson #15, reason #465: You can't fight fire with fire, selfishness with selfishness or bitterness with bitterness. When your world falls apart – when you lose a loved one, a job, a home or something else that meant a great deal to you and that you deemed vitally important to your existence – your will is tested. You don’t just wonder who you will go to for guidance, when you will get a steady income, where you’ll live or how you’ll replace that certain item; you wonder whether you’ll ever recover and if you’ve lost a little part of yourself. You’ve heard me say this again and again. But what you haven’t heard me say is that I am realizing, a year later, that I did. I lost a portion of myself. It was an idealistic and naïve portion, to be sure, but there’s something to mourn in the midst of that. I’ve become a wiser, kinder, stronger person as a result of that loss, but I will never recover that portion again. As it pertains to the professional world, I’ve learned that I have to take care of myself rather than expecting others to have in mind my best interest and, sadly, that not everyone can be trusted. This is what everyone eventually should learn, I suspect, but I had to learn it the hard way. The fact that everyone should be kind and generous doesn’t mean they are. In fact, they frequently aren’t. And with regard to the struggles I've faced in my relationship, I’ve had to learn that Mr. Wonderful’s needs and struggles are as important as my own, sometimes more than. And that, too, is of critical importance, as there is no place for ego in happiness. You can pound your fist and say, “I deserve this, and you’re not giving it!” but there’s a fine line between what they are able to give and don’t and what they aren’t capable of giving at that moment. We have to be sensitive to those things, and we have to be compassionate in those moments. We can’t demand that our partners be super human. But as I’ve come to grips with these losses – the loss of innocence on one hand, the inability to always get what I want on the other – I’ve reached another conclusion: neither of those losses requires that I be bitter. In the crucible of our lives and in our most painful experiences, we can either grow as a result of the lessons we’ve learned or resent the fact that we’ve had to learn them. There are no other options. The first requires my oft-stated openness to acceptance, the latter thrives on a cynicism that believes life is a series of constant disappointments. Fourteen months after I lost my job and a year after grief threatened the foundation of my relationship, I’ve run the full gamut of grief. I’ve encountered shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, the upward turn, reconstruction and, finally, acceptance. I’ve fought for control, screamed at the heavens, studied the theoretical reasons behind certain developments, battled loneliness and come to grips with the new life that I now live as a result of the aforementioned losses. And now the clouds have lifted. The only thing left to do is to rebuild, to take the next step and the one after it... This has been the hardest part of loss for me: figuring out what’s next. When there is no longer an external crisis to fight, life can feel painfully empty and meaningless. But that doesn’t mean it is: it just means it’s another step in the process. And we can't demand, in turn, that equally good things happen. I now have finished that obstacle course as well, and I’m rebuilding in the space that prior tragedy left vacant. It feels good. It feels gradual. It feels necessary. With that, I am closing out the commentary portion of this project. You may get a little more explanation from me, but not much – because I don’t feel the need to dwell on my past losses anymore. I’ve survived them, I’ve mourned them, and now I’m moving past them. I am really, really proud of this development. That doesn’t mean you won’t hear my last 40 lessons or be able to see me finish out my 500 reasons. You will. It just means that I’m going to let those lessons speak for themselves. Thank you for supporting me on this journey to healing. And when you go through your own struggles and pave your own way through the pain you've suffered, I would encourage you to keep going, and I would say this:
-Me PS: It has come to my attention that the post for lesson #8, reason 458 was accidentally deleted. It was this: There is no place for ego in happiness. Yesterday I had a conversation that I feel compelled to tell you about. In it I told a friend of mine, who knows about this blog but doesn't visit, that I was distilling the lessons I've learned over the past year. I explained that this was both to finish off the project and to meaningfully reflect upon the experiences I've had during this time period. "I don't want to take these important lessons for granted," I finished. "These were once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and I don't want to have to walk through fire again in order to remember them." She asked if I thought I'd learn unique lessons. And then it hit me: no, I haven't. I'm not an authority on anything, but during this period I've grown up and learned the lessons everyone else already learned. And most of them are about pain, because this was both a painful and heart-warming time for me. So, without further ado, I'm going to let the following two lessons speak for themselves: #9: None of us is immune from pain (#459). #10: No one's pain looks the same as anyone else's (#460). But you know those things already, don't you? -Me Lesson #4 is a simple one: Commit to living the good life (#454). Philosophers far, far more brilliant than I have debated exactly what that means, but to me it means a life that is both good and well-lived; a life that adds value to the world around us and accomplishes much. A.C. Grayling's recent musings on this subject matter fascinate me, and I find myself agreeing with him repeatedly, but I would like to highlight this idea: that each of us has different value to add, and each of has created different things we would like to accomplish. Enjoyment plays another important role, to be sure, but when we ask ourselves, "Am I living it right?" (in the words of the perhaps not-so-brilliant John Mayer), what we are asking is, "Am I accomplishing what I set out to accomplish? And am I leaving the world a better place than I found it?" -- Lesson #5 goes hand-in-hand with this: We must make the most of what we are given (#455). Laura Munson made this clear in her brilliant memoir, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is, and I like the way she puts it: "At this moment in my life, I am strangely serene. In fact, I may have never felt more calm. Or more freed. Or more certain that these things owe themselves to a simple choice: to accept life as it is. Even and especially when it really f***ing sucks." Amen, and amen! We cannot control that which we cannot control. That idea is as basic as it gets, but we still we forget it. Nevertheless, we have a choice: to accept life as it is (again, lesson #1 and reason #451) and create something positive as a result of it -- either because of or in spite of it. That's where this lesson comes in. While acceptance is required in the pursuit of genuine happiness, acceptance doesn't automatically beget happiness. In fact, acceptance could leave you depressed. "Life sucks," you could think. "There's no point in putting any effort into any of it." But I would advise strongly against that form of acceptance. Acceptance of what you can't control coupled with a desire to change what you can? Now, that's a recipe for both happiness and success. -- Lesson #6 is directly related to this idea as well: I am responsible for my own happiness (#456). Life would be significantly easier if I could bend the universe to suit my tastes, goals, ideas, desires and preferences, but I can't. I have to take responsibility for myself, starting with my own happiness. For me, this boils down to a simple, daily commitment to do three things each and every single day: (1) do something that I enjoy, (2) do one thing that makes me feel better about myself, and (3) create something of beauty or value. -- Lesson #7: Taking responsibility for said happiness is easier said than done (#457). Now, I know that, in theory, it is important for me to commit to do these three things, as I have identified them as critical to my personal happiness, but it is so hard to do this in practice! Accordingly, I have had to force myself to make time to do this daily goal-setting each morning, to stop dead in my tracks and spend five crucial minutes mapping them out. They can be edited as the day goes on, but if I'm not intentional about them every morning, I will completely forget the importance of them. And the next thing I know I've gone a month without prioritizing these three things of critical importance. So it is that yesterday I set out to (1) slowly read and drink coffee, (2) wash my car, and (3) clean my home until it was spotless. (Today = order sushi, exercise and blog.) These aren't big goals, obviously, but they're important to me. Taking time out for myself makes me more valuable to others; taking care of myself and my belongings positively affects my self esteem (and, therefore, sense of security); and creating beauty reminds me both that I am part of a vast ocean of people and to be grateful for what I have. -- So, those are the painfully-obvious-to-people-more-evolved-than-I sorts of things I've been learning. What do you think? -Me By far the most grown-up thing I've realized over the course of this project is that there is no magic formula (#452). There just isn't. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow having won the lottery (and simultaneously gotten out of debt and exorbitantly rich); eloped; created my own business or non-profit (and, therefore, the perfect career); and gotten the chance to vacation anywhere and any time I want. The odds of that happening are not in my favor, and not just because I haven't played the lottery in two full years. The fact that, that is true -- that everything I want isn't going to come to fruition tomorrow, doesn't at all mean that life itself is hopeless. It just means that success in life comes via baby steps and slow-but-steady progress (#453). It means that you don't build a career in a day; you build it over decades. And "happily ever after" isn't something you acquire in a moment; it's a way of living intentionally, day by day. Likewise, financial security is a constant and difficult but rewarding endeavor, and vacations are special occasions, rather than constant. In other words, there is no shortcut -- only hard work and patience. During this process I have come to embrace this knowledge as freeing instead of disappointing. Suddenly I can put less pressure on myself -- and others! -- in this very moment. One bad day isn't going to derail my relationship, career, financial well-being, chance to take a vacation or general happiness. It's just a bad day. Likewise, I remain humble in the good days, because I still have to put forth my best effort the next day. All in all, I learn to live life one day at a time, and as Ida Scott Taylor said, "One day at a time: that is enough." There still are days, of course, that I feel hopeless or overly arrogant, but those days happen less frequently since I've learned these important lessons. I find myself grateful and humble far more often, and that is something to be grateful for. -M "Happiness can exist only in acceptance." ~ George Orwell Over the last nine and a half months I have repeatedly learned a lesson that others have learned many centuries before me: the key to happiness lies in acceptance. I wish I'd learned it sooner, and I wish I could say that when I learned it, it immediately sank in. But I didn't, and it didn't. I've spent most of my 30-year-old life rejecting the status quo, because I am an unabashed idealist. When someone says, "Well, that's just the way it is" -- with regard to anything of any importance (be it inequality, poverty, corruption, lack of opportunity or support, you name it) -- my response is, "Well, it shouldn't be, and it isn't how it has to be. That's ridiculous." Injustice saddens and enrages me, and I've done my personal best to fight it. And that's noble: because when it comes to systemic problems, injustice is ridiculous and unfortunate. But as it pertains to our personal lives, we aren't fighting systems; we're fighting people who have minds of their own, or entities much larger than ourselves. There comes a time when every one of us must fight for what is right, to be sure, but we cannot successfully live life if we choose to fight every single injustice. There are just too many! And if we don't realize that, we will end up exhausting ourselves and never make any meaningful progress. We have to pick our battles, and we have to either embrace acceptance or die trying to fight it. Many, many times in life we are not in control of our circumstances, and we will lose both the battle and our will to fight if we don't understand and accept this. That's why I've been meditating on the lessons I've learned from The Five Things We Cannot Change...and the Happiness We Find By Embracing Them. It's a brilliant book that tackles both the psychological and spiritual reasons to embrace acceptance, and I strongly suspect that I will be reading and rereading it until the day I die. The lessons therein are that important. It's possible that the other 49 lessons I've learned could all be boiled down to this: the key to happiness lies in acceptance. But I'm going to tell you the others anyway. Just remember that when you are feeling sad, angry or frustrated, you must accept the underlying cause of it before you can come up with a solution. Otherwise you're just spinning your wheels. -Me Good morning, dear readers – I apologize for my hiatus. I’ve been dealing with some health issues, trying to catch my breath (thanks to standard busyness), and enjoying 5 much-needed days of vacation. As a result, I’ve been coming to grips with my humanity, trying constantly to channel my vision (of a peaceful me rocking on a porch and drinking coffee), and remembering that one of the benefits of vacation is that it serves as a reminder that everyday life can be much less exhausting than vacation. I’m happy to report that (1) while I’m not as healthy as I thought I was, my health issues aren’t incurable (#445); (2) I am learning to make healthy choices – mentally, emotionally and physically – that will improve my everyday life (#446) mentally, emotionally and physically; and, (3) I have made peace with so many, many things in recent weeks (#447). Of course, as has become the norm, record numbers of you visited this blog during my hiatus (#448). I suspect the subject matter herein must have hit a nerve... You see, we live in what can be a frequently self-centered, arrogant and ungrateful society. And those of us who want to be more enlightened individuals – who want to be thankful for what we have and grateful for life’s little pleasures – find ourselves unsure of how to carve out our own peace in the midst of the aforementioned madness. We seek tranquility in the face of chaos, humility in the face of greed. We aim for loving-kindness when others shoot for power, profit and fame. How, then, do we proceed? That question was the impetus for this project. Sure, I was going through a difficult period, which was preceded by job loss, unemployment and a relationship crisis. But I knew I didn’t have to be tossed about on the waves of those personal catastrophes. And I knew that it was possible to live a life of quiet contentment, inner peace and deeper meaning, because I’d witnessed others who’d cultivated such an existence. I wanted with all of my might to create an inner sanctum that allowed me much-needed respite even when the world around me seemed a mess. I wanted to find the places, people and things that would help me undertake that creation. I wanted peaceful and fulfilling experiences, and I knew no one else was going to give them to me. I was going to have to construct them by myself. That understanding is why I created this project. And I’m incredibly glad that I did (#449). Not because it’s answered all of my questions or has been a silver bullet for all of my problems, but because it’s taught me how to live. It’s taught me to look for the good even when I am overwhelmed by the bad, and it’s showed me the importance and value of humility when I am tempted to be angry and arrogant because circumstances seem unfair. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t stumbled and fallen at various times along the way, as my friends and family would attest. My journey – our journey – is a battle against human nature itself, as I’m fond of reminding you that David Foster Wallace suggested. But over the past 9 and a half months I know I have made progress. And I’m both humbled by and grateful for it (#450). It is in the spirit of that growth that I have decided on a way to conclude this project (and, therefore, end this blog). I will be spending the next 77 days (that is, through the 365th day of this project) recapping the 50 lessons I’ve learned from this project and what they mean to me. I won’t pretend that these are the 50 lessons all of us need to learn in order to live happy, healthful and successful lives. (That would be arrogant, wouldn’t it?) I just want to meditate deeply on the many instrumental lessons that I’ve learned during this process – in times both good and bad. I want those lessons and experiences to be the foundation I build on for the rest of my life, because I think they’re that important to my well-being, and I’m that thankful to have learned them. So, be on the lookout for these last 50 reasons, which are also the overarching lessons I’ve learned during the course of this project. I hope you will join me on this journey’s last leg; it’s thanks to your readership that I’ve managed to complete it. Best, Me The Simple Truths 03/26/2012
Today I share with you a handful of items that have reminded me as of late to connect with life's simple truths. Therein lies the beauty we long for, the pain we wish would heal, the humility we need and the gratitude we desire. Connecting with nature, others and ourselves is essential to our happiness. #440: A wonderful weekend away, staying in a cabin far removed from everyday life. When the directions are "go as far as that road will take you, then take another road 30 miles, then take a left and go a mile, then take a right and go another 10 miles and you'll finally dead-end into your destination," you know you're really getting away from it all. It was unbelievably refreshing. #441: Spending that weekend with strangers who quickly became new friends and then like family -- all in a span of 36 hours. The sense that we are all in this together -- even if we've never met before -- really sank in, in the face of this. They are a remarkable group of people, and it was a remarkable realization. #442: Spending said weekend with said friends giving back. That was the icing on the cake for me. #443: Visiting with a dear friend I hadn't seen in 2 years, and enjoying every minute of it. She's an amazing person, and I'm glad she's back safely in the U.S. I have so missed our conversations. #444: This brilliant piece in the NY Times Magazine on the power and purpose of writing, by Steve Almond. My favorite portion of it: "What [writers] really want isn't fame or fortune but permission to articulate feelings that were somehow off limits within the fragile habitat of their families. They are hoping to find, by means of literary art, braver and more-forgiving versions of themselves." I, too, am looking for a braver and more forgiving version of myself. (Aren't we all?) I am consistently amazed -- though I'm not sure why -- that I am surrounded by such incredible individuals and privileged enough to be encouraged by so many different people and experiences. Thank you all. -Me | AuthorWriting my way through finding 500 reasons to take stock and give thanks in 365 days. The stories and truths are universal; the identity of the author is unimportant. Welcome to the landing ground for my project. ArchivesFebruary 2012 CategoriesAll |
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