Embrace the suck

A great quote I read on the inter webs today.

My favorite book by Charlie Dickens said this in a slightly different way, “…whenever happiness shows up, always give it a comfortable seat.”

It’s easy to get down about things; that’s life. The difference is when you stand up and say, “Not today Satan!” Then, you actually don’t let it beat you down. You do things that make you happy. You do things to take care of yourself. Little things, you don’t have to spend a lot of money or go on extravagant trips, it can be something as simple as taking the time to brush your teeth or having a shower.

Happy people don’t stand in front of the mirror and talk about how happy they are. Stop doing the things that the self-help books are selling you. Happiness is a mindset, and here’s a secret, not everyone is happy all the time and that’s okay.

In one of my favorite movies, Darby O’Gill And the Little People, Darby is sitting in the pub talking about how he captured King Brian of Knocknasheega, king of the leprechauns. The fellow pub-goers are asking Darby how he’ll spend his wishes and one patron asks if he’ll wish for happiness. Darby responds, “No. Man needs bitter with the sweet to make the sweet taste all the better.”

Nothing could be more true, Darby is obviously a thinking man. There are days when you’re going to feel like complete horse crap. There’s no sense dwelling on it, pick yourself up and move on with life. It will eventually pass and happiness will find its way back to you. Just don’t forget to be mindful and enjoy the happiness or you’ll likely only remember the misery.

Our brains are deferential bias machines. They’re wired to only remember the misses and not the hits. Negative things are encoded and embedded in our memories differently than happy things.

Check out this article if you’re interested in reading more about negative bias.

If you don’t take time to bask in the sunlight of the positive things about life, you’ll begin to feel as though life is only filled with misery and sadness.

I get it. Sometimes you just want to shut down, and shut out everyone and everything. I used to say I needed my sadness; I wallowed in it. There’s another quote from Charlie I love pertaining to this…

“It is required of every man,” the ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.”

I don’t know anything about what happens to the spirit after death, but I love the bit about walking abroad among his fellow-men. It reminds me that no man is an island. We’re social creatures, we have to socialize to function. Being social sucks, but that’s part of life. You have to embrace the suck. It’s part of the human condition, and of its most wonderful gift; that you are alive.

I don’t have any tattoos, but this is what I would get if I ever decided to get a permanent one.

Life sucks, that’s life. You have to make a conscious decision to get up, out your feet on the floor, say, “not today satan, today is not all about me, and this is the way.” It’s a risk, you run the chance of having your feelings trampled on, your heart broken, and a myriad of other crappy things happen to you in the course of a day and in life. But, as far as anyone knows, this is the only life we get, so get out there and live it. “The risky zones are life, the rest is just existing.”