Sometimes I just end up with someone’s voice in my head. On repeat. Recently it’s been Ryan Holiday’s from when MindPump interviewed him back in November.
“…You can’t lie to yourself and pretend it’s going to mean anything in the long run.”
He’s talking about happiness, and how we attain it.
You know that quote that says, “If you’re not happy now, what makes you think you’d be happy with more?”
I used to not really understand that. I used to think, okay obviously I would have more, it would make things easier, and my mind would be free from worry. Whether that be more money, more support, more options. But there were two things I was too lazy (or maybe self consumed) to think about. For one, solving problems is actually what brings happiness. Overcoming our own adversities, whether big or small, is the only way to build confidence in who we are. It’s the only way we can learn to trust ourselves. And two, our minds just move the goal post insidiously. So if we don’t cultivate a happiness within, we’re never going to find anything lasting. We are always going to want more. That’s just human nature.
The pendulum swings. We want more. We work for it. We get it. We feel a sense of satisfaction, only to go back to wanting more. I’m not saying it’s bad to have goals and to work towards them. There’s an advantage to both of those things, but at the end of the day, it’s never about the goal itself. It’s always about the work that it takes to get there. It’s always about what we had to overcome to get there.
It has to be about something more than an end result, because in truth there never is an end. That’s why if you’re not enjoying the process, then it’s never going to be worth it. As cringey as it is to even say it, it really is all about the journey. It’s everything that happens in the middle that makes the bottom line matter at all.
But, this is important. This is the hangup with that cliché — it’s not about looking back and realizing it’s about the journey, it’s about recognizing it right now.
I mean life is never about death is it? It’s about all this tiny shit that’s happening in the meantime. It’s never about the orgasm. It’s about the mental and physical lead up. How you pulled out your phone to write down the alliteration he said. What you confessed after three whiskeys. It’s never about reaching your dream body. It’s about how you learned to love your mornings. It’s about how you carved out time for yourself. It’s about what happened inside you during the process.
God. Everything else really is arbitrary if you’re not enjoying the work you do day in and day out. If you don’t have some clear set of values by which you live. If you don’t have some form of self restraint and self control over yourself, when you realize that going after more is never going to be enough.
If you don’t realize that this already is enough.
It’s not about performance. It’s about practice. It’s about taking your time with things. “Bathing in the beauty” of things. Being selective. Choosing where your attention goes instead of living on autopilot. I mean, you can’t notice the simple things around you, and enjoy the process of things if you’re constantly letting yourself be distracted. And trust me, I know it’s easy for me to sit here and say this shit. I know I’m just repeating what others have said a million times before. Shit, I know I’m repeating myself. I know it makes sense in this vacuum of a space. I know that none of these words really matter if there’s no application behind it. I know it’s hard.
Sometimes I do this thing when I’m falling asleep where I literally coax myself to bed. Like I’ll figuratively stroke my hair and mentally tell myself that it’s okay. You can fall asleep now. I split myself in two. I take the part of me that’s worried about the future or hung up on the past and I take care of her like she’s a child. I let my higher, more evolved self silence this jealous, worried, comparing little girl inside of me.
That’s kind of what I do here in a way. I write out these thoughts that I know to be true. These ideas that should be easy to follow, but that I struggle to implement. I mean, I know this is human. I know we all do this. This is the human condition. The knowing of what’s right and struggling to do it anyway. The talking ourselves into and out of things.
But ya know what? I think it’s okay. I feel a great sense of peace letting my higher self guide the little kid inside me. I feel like I could laugh and cry at the same time. I think as long as we take these moments to think about these things, we can slowly creep towards our values. We can look up. We can never stop learning what it means to be human. We can worry about just ourselves. We can enjoy it. Bathe in it. Learn from it so that it can actually mean something.
I mean seriously, what else is there to do?
Missy January 17, 2020
I’m smiling with your thoughtful glitches.