Are you excited to see me again? Two posts in one day!
I was inspired to write again after I had a Dove Chocolate wrapper give me some startling news. Apparently, according to chocolate, I am "exactly where I need to be." Uh-huh. I guess I can interpret that in a few different ways.
1. My life as it stands right now is plenty good and I should not seek to change it.
2. I am only where I need to be at this moment (at a computer).
3. Where I am right now is where I need to be in order to be somewhere better in the future.
An optimist would choose the third option. A cynic would choose option number two. A moron would probably choose number one.
I typically fall somewhere between two and three, although I have been known to be a bit of the first type at times.
Of course, there are so many unpredictable components to this. It brings me back to a conversation I overheard a few weeks back. Some people were complaining about all the crappy things going on in their lives. Just to be clear, I have very little patience with this sort of conversation because it's very hard to listen to given the state of so many other things in the world at any given moment, but before I digress, back to the point.
One of the speakers made the comment that they expected that things just HAD to get better because they had been waiting for so long and endured all these bad things. I believe they were attempting to portray themselves as an optimistic person. In reality, this kind of statement belies a truly pessimistic personality and quite also a person who is somewhat out of touch with reality in general. At this point, I interjected with the comment that no one is promised anything. Things may not improve in the way that you expect.
My point was that it does not do any good to discount today or even the past as terrible or even a glitch in good fortunes because you really miss out on any potential happiness to be found in the present. No one is promised tomorrow (I know this sounds cheesy) and if we're constantly assuming that our lives are terrible I am not sure how anyone can really recognize when something truly good happens. It seems that a lot of people brush off the positive things as too small to notice.
In a world where we are told that bad things are always happening, it leads us to assume that of course our lives are crap all of the time. Yes, tragedies occur and pain is real. Everyone's personal pain threshold can only be measured in their own mind; it is not empirical science. But in the limited amount of time that we are given to live, do you really want to spend it waiting for bad things to happen? What happened to taking things as they come? Or is that too relaxed of a thought for today's super-hyper-ultra-connected world?
Can you believe that this whole rant was inspired by candy? Wow. I should probably lay off the candy for a while.
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