Is life hard because we’ve decided it is, we’ve been told it is, or believe it is? Probably a combination of all three. In point of fact, there is very little support in your average circle for any other way of thinking.
Darn good question, right?
Let’s start with a list of 6 things we say every day that perpetuate what we “know” to be true.
- I hate when that happens.
- I knew that would happen.
- What else is new?
- Why does this always happen to me?
- The world is such a f-ed up place, right?
Is life hard because we make it that way…or because it just is, and the sooner we accept that fact the sooner we can get on with living it in whatever way we can?
There’s really only one way to answer this question—and no, I’m not a guru or the Dalai Lama, or Yoda. I’m just a functioning Highly Sensitive Person who woke up one day and realized it was all a matter of perspective.
That there’s what is—the “reality” of the situation—and then there’s what you choose to think and believe about it.
Sure, we could argue until the end of time that we were born to struggle from the moment we came out of the womb. That our circumstances have led us to be where we are and nothing could have changed that or changed what and who we have become. The circular logic of it is actually pretty genius, don’t you think? Because it’s easy to accept that if we’re born into circumstances beyond our control, and spend our lives reacting to those circumstances, even if circumstances change, we will always be at their mercy.
For me, life felt hard because it was hard. It was that simple. No one could tell me that my life wasn’t hard, because that was my experience, an ongoing composite of all the things I did, the places I went, the things I learned, the people I met, and so on. Nothing was easy. Nothing came easily to me. Nothing felt right. Anyone trying to convince me otherwise simply did not understand my situation, and obviously never would.
And I was one of the fortunate ones, born into a loving (if abjectly dysfunctional) family with enough money to keep us clothed and fed and a powerful emphasis on education. So I’m not going to cry about my humble, though middleclass, beginnings.
What I do want to address is how early on in my life I learned to accept that life was hard. That it didn’t matter what you did, nothing would change that fact.
Did I want it to be different? Yes. Did I believe it could be different? Sure, deep down in the recesses of my heart and soul. And yet, there it was: Life. Always proving otherwise. Always reminding me that there was no way out.
I guess what I’m saying here is that this stance on life is all too common, but in the end, it is always, always, up to us to look for the hug in life instead of the punch in the gut. To recognize our own ability to see things differently, even when support for our divergent beliefs go unappreciated. To decide that perhaps feeling like a victim feels worse than how it feels to step into a new vibrational space.
Here’s what I know.
Today, as I sat looking at this blank document and wondering what I wanted to say to all of you, I kept thinking about how disappointed I was in something I did yesterday. I had spent until 3 AM feeling bad about it, in fact. I’d gone around and around in my head, blaming myself and then the other person involved, for hours. Then two things happened: First, I woke up and took responsibility for the situation without the piled-on guilt. Second, I fully accepted I could not take responsibility for the way the other person reacted.
We are on our own paths, people, but we travel them side-by-side. Loving yourself means loving your neighbor and loving your neighbor means living in the vibration of an open heart. Living in the vibration of an open heart?
That’s easy.
