It has been approximately four months since my last confession... I mean blog post. I had been cooking one up ready to put lots of thought into, and then I lost my notes. That may have something to do with me having moved from Dunedin to Wellington just one week ago.
It has taken me to go through a city move and a break up to finally get here and announce something you already figured out years ago - we must take the bad with the good. I mean it though - how many times this week have you become really annoyed or upset because something has not gone your way? Probably more than you think... I'll borrow a sentiment from Ekhart Tolle - that when something crap happens and we feel bad in any way about it - we are doubling our suffering. That's right! We could go through the unpleasant thing and accept it and do what we can to mitigate the situation, or we could feel terrible about it and wallow in self pity for a time. I don't know about you but I all too often do the latter.
A week ago I moved to Wellington. On that same day I broke up with my partner of almost a year. To be honest I feel overwhelmed, upset, aggrieved, hurt, angry, confused, lost, stressed, disgusted... I could go on. I can choose to sit here and cry, I can choose to accept what has happened and work on my situation, I can choose to get angry and smash things. I can't choose whether or not something disagreeable has already happened to me, and I can't choose to make it un-happen. Which of the three things I suggested that I can choose, do you think would be the most healthy and cause the least suffering? Well duh! It's obvious! I need to choose to accept it and move on!
Of course, some of you will be thinking "yeah... but it's not that easy". I agree. It's not easy. The grief surges up on me and I instantly feel gut-chemical misery. I'm not sure you can just tell that to go away. Yet, you can recognise that it is a natural part of life. You know what I mean - the grass is always greener and all that - we want what we can't have all the time. We are with someone and all we can see is how they should change, and then we are not and we feel like maybe if we had changed ourselves..? We study to get that degree to get in that career, we get in and then we miss the student lifestyle. We eat the savory and then we want the sweet. We eat the sweet and then we feel sick. We drink to fit in and then we get drunk and say stupid things. We leave the small town for the opportunities, and then we get to the big city and we are overwhelmed by the choices.
Humans are almost impossible to satisfy.
I think we might be built that way on purpose. Can you imagine always getting what you want when you want it? Does that thought feel good? I think if we had that we would get bored of it. I think half the people who are looking for secure relationships would get bored if they had one. I think most of us, if we had the body we wanted, we'd just find flaws and not appreciate it anyway. I also think this is good.
*Did she just say she thinks suffering is good? - She cray cray!*
I think it is good because it means if bad things happen - we can truly appreciate when good things happen. If I am so unwealthy that I eat only noodles for a month, aside from the ongoing health problems associated with such a poor diet, I am sure going to appreciate a big falafel kebab at the end of the week. If I have delicious things like that every day, I am going to start expecting it and become complacent and quite probably ungrateful. All this seems so simple right? If bad happens, accept it and move on: appreciate good things when they come along. But you know what? Most of us forget to do these. We're constantly searching, waiting, wondering what will come next - and if we're trying to make things happen we're often too fast, too impatient. So we get disappointed easily and often, and then we do the old Tolle thing and double our suffering. We get upset that we're upset! How would it be if we realised that we need those times of upset? How would it be if we tried to enjoy them? I don't mean in a masochistic way of course, I mean in the way that we enjoy popping pimples - we know it's gross but it's kinda entertaining. We know the times are bad, but they have some value. They are real challenges that we can learn from, and when they are over we can feel really very good - because as humans, even though things are most often grey, we tend to need the black to see the white.
I'll leave you with three things to consider. The first is a film called My Dinner with Andre; The second is a paraphrased Kipling quote that my dear friend Kieran has shared with me on numerous occasions: "When met with triumph or disaster - treat these two impostors just the same". The third is a quote from Spock himself: "You may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."
