Nothing ( I mean absolutely nothing) is for free, not even your happiness. Just like everything in the life, there is a cost attached to happiness. Sadly, in the world we live in today nobody understands this. We want the gain but we don't want the pain, we want the success but we don't want the hard work, we want the benefits of happiness but we unwilling to pay the cost. The unwillingness to pay
the cost for our desire is what makes us live a miserable and sad life.There are several things you can do to earn temporary happiness, like go for shopping, visit friends and many more BUT how do we sustain happiness in spite of the challenging task that confronts us everyday, the problems we encounter everyday, our fears, our imperfections and even those hateful comments we get on social media (I mean really awful bullies on social media).
The only way to sustain happiness is by paying the price everyday.
When I say temporary happiness, some people feel happy and distracted from their challenges, when they go shopping but what happen afterwards? what happens when the tingly tingly happy feeling of having new clothes in your closet fades and the thing that made you unhappy comes up again? Yes happiness is a thing of choice because God has so blessed humanity with the ability to make decisions. Your ability to be able to decide to always put happiness on the checklist before carrying out/ making conclusions on your actions makes happiness thing of choice.
How about when something you have no control over happens, is happiness is still a choice? Is happiness still a choice when some stranger hits you and you lost your leg to a botched surgery? Is happiness still a choice when the cold hands of death suddenly grabs a person very dear us? When some bad things happen to you, you will cry so hard, you might even wish to die too. You feel sad and so depressed the moment you remember that you had your two legs until some silly stranger ripped you of one of it. In fact you feel sad when life brings huge surprises that are just not in your favor. Life can be cruel a times , take it or leave it. It can suddenly rip all your plans and leave you clueless for a while but there is one thing you will always have in your very hands: CHOICE. Life can not take choice from you.
Happiness is a choice and happiness definitely has a cost. Mind you the fact that happiness is a choice does not mean a person cannot cry, feel sad or unhappy when something bad happens or something goes wrong. No wonder the same situation can happen to two different people and yet there lives can turn out to be the exact opposite. In between fate of the past and the future lies a processing machine called "the mind."
Lets say two different persons got hit by a two different drunk drivers and they later lost there legs to a botched surgery. They with both cry and ask God why this had to happen to them, they will both ask themselves the "what's next now that I have only one leg" question, they will both regret why they ever stepped out of their house that day and they will both most definitely curse the hell out of the driver. Emotions are reeling and it's fine! nothing wrong with releasing one's emotions but afterwards a decision has to be made.
Mr A then decides to sit down everyday, cry his eyes out, tell himself that he his as good as a dead man and nothing good can ever come out of this life again, he totally gives up on himself and never forgives the driver. Mr A also decides to release his anger on everyone, his self esteem begins to diminish and he lives a bitter life until his organs starts failing and suddenly he dies. Then there is Mr B who decides to make the best of his life and refuses to allow something he had no control over, truncate his life. He decides that no matter what, he will still be happy. He will look past the hateful comments of some people and go ahead to pursue his dreams because to him having one leg is not going to be the end of his world, he decides to look past his flaws and predicaments. He also decides to find a deeper sense of purpose to go for what he wanted before that thing he had no control over came along his way. Mr B works hard works and remains committed to accomplishing his dreams. Mr B becomes a successful business man , marries a beautiful woman and his a father to three beautiful children. And then many years later he dies, not as a sad man with one leg but he dies a man who lived a happy, fulfilled and successful life.
The difference you ask me?
The difference is that Mr B made a decision to pay the price of happiness, and Mr A did not. Often in life, the unexpected comes our way. Life comes with is own unexpected goodies and just maybe at that point life bring an unexpected sad surprise our way, we do not have a choice. We will cry so hard, we feel like the end has finally come, we will ask question and we will wish life was fair enough. The truth is life isn't fair, it wasn't even fair in the B.C ( before Christ was born) but at the same time life is in our very own hands as for the moment we live on this earth. Life will not give us what we desire every time but we can take the lemons life throws at us and make lemonades out of it.
Yes we can, if we :
LOOK PAST OUR IMPERFECTIONS AND FLAWS.
I do not believe that a human being can be without flaws and can be perfect. I believe in progress. You see, to me life is a race, everyone is on their own lane. As we keep running this race, we encounter things, we make decisions, we make mistakes, we learn lessons, we improve, we develop and we should make progress. Just as we will keeping running this race in life, so will we keep running this race of perfection. It never ends. As we run towards it, we will make progress and make improvements but we will never be perfect and flawless. The race of perfection never ends until we take out last breath. So please get over the imperfect conception of a perfect life, it doesn't exit. Forget what the cover girl say, no one has a perfect, flawless life. Many of us allow the ghost of our imperfections and flaws to hunt us forever. we should relieve ourselves of these arbitrary standards that other people set for us( mind you you didn't set those standards!) .... life will never conform to all of our desires. Ever. And we will always be wrong about something, in some way. Ironically, it’s the acceptance of this that allows us to be happy with it, allowing us to appreciate the flaws in ourselves and in others. And that, my friends, is a good thing.
SELF RESPONSIBILITY.
This one price we all have to pay to be happy. Take it or leave it, some things that are out of your control will happen to you. This thing might not be in your favor. When a stranger suddenly snatches the steering wheel of our vehicle , you know what happen right? Uncertainty! that is what happens when the plan changes and it seems like life is driving you out of your perfect plan. When this is happens , do you just sit down and wallow in self pity because life has stopped you right in the middle of a dark forest and you have no idea what next to do OR do you take back the steering wheel, wipe the sweat off your brows and look life in the face and say, "I will definitely find a way out of this, I didn't put myself in this situation but this is not where I want to be either, so I am taking charge again and I will find my way out of this place. " This my friend is choice. The choice to be reasonable enough to understand that, this is your life and no one else has it but you. Stop blaming the situation, stop blaming other people for your problems. The fact that a situation affects you, should be not be a reason for you to loose control over your life but it should be a reason for you to take responsibility and get your life back right where you want it to be. Sure, shit happens but it’s your responsibility to recover from that loss, both physically and emotionally. So get recovering.
The most important skill in life is not how to avoid getting knocked down, but rather learning how to stand back up.
This just part one of this article. Part two comes tomorrow. I wish you all a blessed Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment