I hate the up and down so so much! What scares me the most now is that I have gotten so worn out from the up and down that I have felt myself lately slipping into apathy. I have never been apathetic about ANYTHING lol. I feel like the ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude that made me fritter away a lot of junior/senior year of college is trickling into my whole life now. I can’t figure out a direction to motivate myself towards. Everything is so hard. Daily stuff is monotonous yet frustrating and infuriating beyond belief, I work a job that is an utter joke with no compensation for the daily crap that goes with it and I feel like I am spinning my wheels. Except I still keep getting older every day and my life is being lived while I watch it happen… all while being incredibly dissatisfied. Which is terrifying and disconcerting and discouraging all at once. And then recently it is like I suddenly decided in order to cope, I need to just quit overanalyzing everything. And just kind of float along. Not care about the things that happen around me because they are all disheartening and not going in the direction that I want. But I know that isn’t the way I will ever be happy living. Maybe someone else would, but I truly cannot do that. And I agree that everything is a choice. But maybe happiness is a choice in as much as you choose to seek it. I am start to think that you cannot, no matter how totally and devotedly you want it, will the happiness to exist in your life. Is that pessimistic of me? Just like you can choose to love someone, but you cannot will yourself to actually feel the love some days. Because isn’t happiness a feeling (if an intellectual type) more or less in a way? I don’t know…I ramble J The result of stumbling into work at 6:30 this morning to push not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different group’s breakfasts around 7 different floors this morning. Oh yeah, I am invaluable!
UGGGGHHH! I hate when it erases my comments.
ReplyDeleteAnyway... the jist of what I had written was I'm tired of spinning my wheels and questioning my own happiness. I feel completely content until somebody asks - well are you really happy? Well yeah, I thought I was. Then it's typical over analytical me - what's happiness? Am I happy? How do I define my happiness? Maybe this that or the other would really make me happy?
Then I read the article by Peter Kreeft. The question he asks is does it bring you peace. That to me is the much better question. There will always be times that we aren't "happy" but that doesn't me our lives are over. There will always be sad times, times we are upset, times when things don't go our way or exactly how we want them but life goes on. As longs as there is peace we're good. So good!
It doesnt matter if i move away. we are still on the same emotional schedule i swear! Writing more after lunch - crazy freakin day.
ReplyDeleteI have been a lot more solution oriented lately.
ReplyDeleteToday was one of those days where I felt like I was trying to run in sand. I love the bit about peace in Sarah's response. I was realizing I was trying to tackle so much more than i could realistically accomplish before the end of the day, then Sarah's Kreeft reference reminded me of something else I read. I've mentioned these emails I get everyday (for... five years now.. and i still read them every day). I just pulled it from the archive. I LOVE it.. and it really helped ease my hormonally ridden self today:
Going Easy. Go easy. You may have to push forward, but you don't have to push so hard. Go in gentleness, go in peace. Do not be in so much of a hurry. At no day, no hour, no time are you required to do more than you can do in peace. Frantic behaviors and urgency are not the foundation for our new way of life.
Do not be in too much of a hurry to begin. Begin, but do not force the beginning if it is not time. Beginnings will arrive soon enough. Enjoy and relish middles, the heart of the matter. Do not be in too much of a hurry to finish. You may be almost done, but enjoy the final moments. Give yourself fully to those moments so that you may give and get all there is. Let the pace flow naturally. Move forward. Start. Keep moving forward. Do it gently, though. Do it in peace. Cherish each moment.
Today, God, help me focus on a peaceful pace rather than a harried one. I will keep moving forward gently, not frantically. Help me let go of my need to be anxious, upset, and harried. Help me replace it with a need to be at peace and in harmony.
-Hazelden
PS. I can totally empathize with you Meaghan. It is a hard line to walk, between being apathetic and overly analytical. I like to thing peace is the middle point: gratitude and acceptance for what is, but the clarity to move forward in peace, at a steady pace, not expecting anything to happen overnight.
I love these comments. Peace! I feel like that sentiment was exactly what I needed to hear right now. I operate in terms of hope on a daily basis. Never give up hope, never lose optimism, never let go of possibilities even when it seems like they are not going to come true. But I need to breathe and register a breathing point: peace.
ReplyDeleteThanks girlies!
I am having a blog day :) Here is something I ran across that seemed to sum up what we were all expressing here. I think it is beautiful!
ReplyDelete"Here’s a snippet from George MacDonald1 that sums things up:
They had a feeling, or a feeling had them, till another feeling came and took its place. When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone.2
That’s the way, isn’t it? Moods come and go, and it’s foolish to take any one of them for the way life is. This is true of happy moods as well as sad ones.
Not that all joy is temporary; but all states of mind are temporary. The trick is having a solid foundation, something that lets you hold on to peace even in the middle of an emotional storm; so that, no matter how bad it gets, the bottom never drops out. That’s why the Psalmist is always calling God a rock: something solid, something that isn’t dislodged even when the sea is angry."