Wednesday, February 19, 2014

All is well.. In my world.

There have been times in my life where I have felt not good enough. Not for myself, not for my friends and especially not for my family. I felt unintelligent, sad and worthless. It wasn't anyone's fault - although, if at the time you asked me why I felt like that, I'd probably blame circumstances, I'd blame God, and most of all I'd blame the people who left me feeling stranded. You see, it's easy blaming others for the mishaps in your life. I can think of a few people I know I blamed constantly for "leaving me".. I consistently blamed them for the lack of trust I had in various relationships around me. I would purposely keep information and personal thoughts to myself in fear that if I shared them with another, and that person left me - they'd take a part of me with them.. And I'd be left feeling broken all over again. Such strong words there.. You can only imagine the chaos that was my mind. 

It's natural. We all go through ups and downs with our emotions, and there are times in our lives where we feel certain negativity towards ourselves. In fact, more often than not, you spend a large part of your existence not being happy with who you are, with what you look like and how your life is going. The saddest part of this is not that you felt this way, but the length of time you felt like that for. Some people feel this way for their entire lives, and they leave this world with no love or contentment within themselves. 

As it is, psychologically speaking - your teenage and early adulthood years (along with the quarter life crisis and the mid-life crisis!) are quite complicated - removing circumstances like losing loved ones and so forth - It's such a confusing time in your life - you feel unprotected, unloved (for whatever reason, even if it's untrue), anxious, insecure and completely lost. Relationships falter because of these emotions, and that just adds to the barrel of "bad things" that keep happening to you during those years. 

However, I like to think that I've gladly changed that "emo" side of me. You see, I've become a strong believer of what you put out to the world, it will give to you wholeheartedly. If you think, for instance that you're going to do really badly in your exams - chances are, you will. You'll subconsciously make it happen. Your mind is in fact, that strong. Tell yourself you have a headache over and over, and you'll get one. That kind of thing. So if you believe you are worthless, you will be worthless. You will do things that will just fulfil your mindset time and time again and lead down that spiral more. It's only when you realise that your thought process have somehow gone wonky along the way, do you make positive changes to them. 

When I look back on the last 25 years - I see a lot of darkness. And I'm not even that old. I see tragedy, solitude, anger, unhappiness and so much frustration at the life I was leading. It's not all gone away, I'll be honest. There are still moments where I find myself caught in a web of frustrations that I can't shake off. But I also know that I am well equipped with a stronger mind and a happier self to look past those negativities now.

Life is hard. It really is. At least the one I've lead thus far - it's filled with so much nonsense that you could otherwise do without. But it's so easy to get stuck in different ruts and not know how to pull yourself out of them. Overtime you realise that your happiness doesn't lie with someone else - it is actually you (I sound way too cheesy.. There is more coming by the way). Your happiness is you, it's inside you - it's not going to come from another person. Another person will mirror it, surely, and will add to it - but the contentment and ease that comes from that happiness has to start from you. Because that will depend on how you'll react to others around you; for instance, your partner could fly to the moon and bring a piece back for you, and yet you'd still be unfulfilled (this is providing you want said piece of moon of course, let's just assume for the sake of my example, you do.) and would eventually continue being unhappy. The fact is, the core part of you that is unsettled, if undealt with - will stay the same until you do something about it.

I've realised that in order to be happy, you have to take things in to your own hands. You can't blame others, and you certainly can't just wait around for people to enter your life to make you feel happy.

Humans are odd. They're complicated and on some level, masochistic as well. There's a certain buzz you get from being sad. Yes, I know - I sound doolally. But it's true - there's this strange feeling in sadness, it's like you know that you never want to feel like that again, but once it's gone - the memory of it so easily sends you down that spiral again. And sometimes, you just want to stay in that sadness. The other day, I was talking to an acquaintance about sadness - and she told me she was feeling upset and wanted to be left on her own and just wanted to delve deeper in her sadness for a while. I laughed, understanding exactly what she meant. After a while, I just stood around thinking how utterly bizarre that was. You willingly want to be sad? You want to sit alone, think about sad things and just be.. Sad? Why do you want to do that? Clearly you have to enjoy that strange buzz on some level, right?

It's not our fault though. I mean it is, because growing up - you listen to Avril Lavigne and all these other emo bands and singers that reinforce the idea that sadness is in fact, cool. There's this whole mysteriousness in being sad that you think brings you positive attention (which it does not). Being sad, after a while gets well.. Annoying. You can have patience of a saint, but at some point you'll want to shake the person in question and scream "look around you, revel in the small happinesses you have, there's nothing monumentally wrong with you or your existence. Be grateful to the life God has given you." But alas, most of the times we shy away from being that upfront and honest. I don't understand why.

I digress, as per usual. When I was younger, I remember a lot of unsettling things from various relationships around me. I recall fights, anger, financial problems and all sorts of nasty things like that. Over the years when I was old enough to understand what those events were, I was told stories of fraud, dishonesty, heartbreak and so many other sad and deeply upsetting things to do with the people I knew and loved. These stories were filled with such negativity that it inadvertently built fear within me for various situations. I was afraid of the idea of marriage of one point, and at another - of finances. But there was always a reason to be in fear of something and sadly not a lot of positivity. Now I've talked a lot about fear on my blog over the years. And it's something I've had a strong dislike towards for as long as I know. I'm guilty of it too. But I also know that fear can easily be replaced by much nicer emotions - perhaps not love, but like at least. 

When you grow up with fearful ideas, you'll only ever know that because that's what you saw/was instilled in you. Again, there's no blame here - because you only teach what you know (and the younger, learn what they are therefore taught). And if all you know is fear and sadness, well that's what you'll pass on. One of the things that stops me from being in a state of sadness is picturing myself in the future in two ways - one, where I'm completely and unimaginably happy and beaming with well.. Happiness, and the other where I'm a bit of a slump, sad and in another dreaded situation. It's actually quite powerful. And scary. It's scary to think that the negative thoughts you build now, will only get stronger as time passes - leading you to nothing else but misery. What a frightening thought, eh?

It's simple - think good things, and good things will happen. Be passionate for the things you enjoy doing and make you happy - in fact, do them often. Be desperate for good changes and for things you want to do in your life, and they'll come to you. Have faith, and be patient and overall just take things in a light-hearted manner. I harp on about this all the time - but I think we need to be more grateful for what we have and the people we have around us (rather, we spend so much time thinking about those who have gone, that we forget to appreciate those who are still around). Don't forget to exist in the day that you're in - and don't stalk the past that much. Bask in the happiness of smaller things, and forget the materialism that has become life. And most of all - don't wish for things that other people have, be happy for them and wish them more good. You'll have your own good too.

It's easy to be upset, and it's easy to make lists of everything that is wrong with you and your life. It's harder to be happy, which is ironic - but once you feel a bit of it, you'll want to be surrounded by it, you'll want to bathe in it, savour it, revel in it and most of all, you'll never want to feel anything else again. If nothing else, do it for the future you who is high-fiving you for making an effort at being happy (self five. Self pat).

It's taken me many years to fully say this without holding back out of fear that it won't last - but.. I am happy. I want to always be happy. And I will continue to be happy. The stuff around the edges, the daily frustrations, decisions to be made in the future and so forth - none of that frightens me any more. I know it's there, and I know, in it's own time - it will make sense. 

I'm happy to report that all that sadness, negativity, sourness, bitterness, fear, heartbreak and all other such feelings are a distant memory. You've been around for far, far too long.

In the spirit of being submerged in happiness, here is a song that I'm completely in love with at the moment. 


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