“Peace, love, and happiness are priceless, but there’s no price too high to be shed of misery.”
Yep, that’s an original quote and something I have found to be true in life. I have to explain to you why I am writing on this subject and it all comes just from observation.
I look around me, in this community, my family, friends, and even people I am barely acquainted with and I see an awful lot of misery floating around. That’s to be expected to a degree. We all have things in our lives that make us unhappy or stress us out, but it seems to me the way I see the people around me handling this misery, no matter the form, is just all wrong.
This includes me as well. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was just poking everyone around me.
This column is as much a reminder to me as I hope it is an eye opener for you.
Whether it’s a job, relationship, or living situation, no matter the issue at hand, it seems more and more of the people I come into contact with are holding onto their misery and unhappiness instead of dealing with it. The question is why.
Why is it in the face of utter unhappiness we as human beings are willing to continue to do the same things over and over and expect a different result — yes, the definition of insanity — when after any type of life experience that should be one of the first lessons we learn moving from childhood to adulthood.
Where I am concerned, I learned that lesson the hard way, yet, when I came out the other side I discovered my life was totally different. The discovery I am not responsible for another person’s happiness, other than the effect my behavior has on them, was liberating, and since I have applied this to all facets of my life.
Turns out, I needed to write this column to remind myself of how I need to be conducting my own business and managing my own happiness while I was caught up wondering how all of these others could be putting themselves through stress and misery.
Tsk…tsk…tsk. Shame on me as I was so busy judging I neglected to remove the mote from my own eye.
In my own defense, social media and personal interaction had so overwhelmed me, I found myself snowed under, too amazed at what I was seeing to look in the mirror.
It seems we as people have a tendency to live in denial, doing all we can to convince ourselves that what we know to be true is the opposite, forcing ourselves into a corner which leads to rationalizing our actions — or rationalizing the actions of others. Sometimes we find it much too easy to accept dancing with the devil we know rather than letting another cut in. Being afraid of change or the unknown isn’t a unique quality for any single one of us. It is a natural occurrence for us all at one time or another.
But change is good and coming to know that is also liberating. None of us was born with an expiration date printed on our bodies so without having some sort of prescient ability, you better live every single minute as if it were your last.
I got over a fear of change a long time ago and thrive on an opportunity for new challenges and new adventures in my life. I am past what I assume is the halfway point for me and there are things I don’t even know I want to experience yet. The one thing I personally can’t and won’t allow to happen is for my life to become bogged down in misery, and therein lies the truth.
You do absolutely have the choice as to what you allow in your life, including the people around you. Choosing happiness is just that — a choice.
As I said at the beginning of this column, for me, there’s no price too high to be shed of misery and I don’t want to be company for yours.