While trying to get my work life under control, which involves getting my organizational life and family life in order, I have figured something out:
I need to be happy.
Happiness is pretty subjective since one person’s happy is not the same as another’s. However, we can pretty much agree that being happy means you find meaning in your life and can find yourself with a smile on your face several times a day. However, don’t confuse it with contentment. I can be happy without being content. I can also be somewhat content without being totally happy. Plenty of people are content to sit around complaining about everything from politics to the holes in their underpants, but they are fairly miserable. I don’t really want to be content, at least not in a content-about-overall-life way. I like to strive for something, many things, at all times, which kind of goes against contentment.
So, the goal is finding happiness while pursuing life ambitions and ignoring all the negativity.
It sounds easy. Or maybe not. We live in a country where we are told to continuously find our happiness, BUT no one reeeeally wants us to be happy. If they did, people wouldn’t come down so hard on you for embracing your inner and outer bliss.
-Have a workout regimen and diet that makes you happy, healthy, and good looking? They call you shallow and obsessed.
-Enjoy making lovely meals from fresh ingredients and fun herbs? They call you a pretentious foodie.
-Did you spend a long time growing your hair out and are now loving your long, shiny mane? They tell you to clean yourself up and chop off that immature mess of hair.
-Do you enjoy serious biographies? Pretentious. Prefer fluffy chick lit? Idiocracy!
-Let’s not even touch the job/career topic.
-And heaven forbid you wear a pink dress, or even worse, let your daughter wear one. Bad enough you shackle yourself to the patriarchy, but THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!
-NOT complaining about your husband basically makes you a social pariah these days.
-My new favorite is listening to people criticizing others for wearing gym clothes in public, pointing to an example walking by. While in the GYM parking lot. People wearing workout clothes to work out, what a travesty.
-Did you wear leggings as pants? Get ready to be burnt at the stake. Even if they are thick leggings meant to be worn as pants. (<<<That one still kills me.)
I find the faux smartness and negative views of reality to be a huge drain lately. It is like an entire section of society at large has become an emotional vampire. I know all to well how easy it is to get sucked up into this complainy, negative spiral. I have been there. At one point in my younger years, I learned I basically had to ditch most of my friends if I didn’t want to deal with catty negativity. The problem with that approach is it is not easy to rebuild a friend list when you are selective about pissy attitudes.
What on Earth has made us all so bitter? My guess is a lack of self responsibility. The past few decades are a major era of passing the blame and it has trickled down into individual emotions as much as politics. So many people are willing to place the blame for all of their problems on anyone or thing they can, despite the true source looking back at them in the mirror.
A big part of my striving for happiness quest is turning issues back on myself. How did I cause it? How can I fix it? It is my choice to let a problem be a problem. I can change myself and most of my life if I just pick myself up and do it. This has not been easy. It is so easy to play the victim, especially when you are the victim sometimes. The important thing is to accept what happened and find a way to make peace with it by fixing it, removing it from your life, or changing your feelings toward it. My biggest hurdle has been attacking my feelings about the They people. All those they-people I mentioned above who try to rain on your parade. They are the people who seem to not realize that even Daria grew up eventually and stopped being a satire.
If only real life could have a big IGNORE button like on an internet forum. But wait, it does. It is simply called ignoring them. Easier said than done, of course. I think the real ignore button is having so much self-confidence, self-worth, and stick-to-it-ness, that you simply don’t give a flying rat’s ass what stupid, angry diatribe is flowing through anyone’s head. The older I get, the more my grandmother’s wisdom floats through my mind: “Ignore catty jealousy, girly girl. Thinking about it will give you wrinkles”. I am not sure she was right about the jealousy part, but she was totally right about it being catty. And the wrinkles. I think a part of negativity comes from denying our deep, dark ID feelings. You can claim to be all ego as much as you want, but eventually your baser urges come out.
The other day, as I was putting on my pink work out clothes (with tight compression leggings for running, as pants!), tied up my stupidly long hair, and looked at my daughter who was wearing a sparkly tutu while holding a Jake And the Neverland Pirates ship, I thought: Screw it. Screw all that crap. I am going to spend an entire week doing stuff that is fun.
And it stuck. So I am doing another week of fun.
You know what I find fun?
-Taylor Swift 1989. This album is awesome. It is fun and dreamy and romantic and sad and makes me feel kind of like I am 15 again, but in a fun way.
-Hot Apple Cider in my new mug I got from my sister. She works at Caribou. I don’t tell her I prefer Starbucks. Apple cider is yummy. And the mug is pretty. Hey, it is the small things.
-Silly girl magazines and books. I dig Glamour and Southern Living. They amuse me and also give me Ideas. I recently ordered Nice Girls Just Don’t Get It: 99 Ways to Win the Respect You Deserve, the Success You’ve Earned, and the Life You Want and #GIRLBOSS. Unfortunately, ordering these has made amazon flood me with suggestions of literature I definitely do not care to read. There is a thin, but very definitive line between being-a-better-person-lit and stomp-all-over-everyone-lit. I might add something more fluffy by Celia Rivenbark.
These things are fun, and being myself is fun, because they allow for happiness to just happen. It manifests naturally instead of being work. I have noticed my children (like all children) seem to have the smarts in this whole jig. If I take the fun seeking drive of my three year old, add the negotiation skills of my four year old, and the easygoing-ness of my five month old, the day just flows easier. As for the they-people, their words and thoughts are just opinions. And you know what they say about those.
Besides, a young, quirky blond girl already dished out the real wisdom: shake it off.