We all just want to be heard and loved. When having a disagreement with someone the best you can do to understand their side is to define the words they are using as they define them; the sooner you'll get to being back to smiling. Stubbornness will kill any progress and just add layers to the curfuffle. But if you humble yourself and throw away that really great point you still had when the conflict ended it will be worth it. We are often given a choice that you can either be happy, or you can be right.
Humans are built for relationship. If you are hurting call someone. The self pity of suffering alone may short term make you feel better as you embrace the sadness, but there is a time you will eventually need to stop being a martyr, and ask for help. Self pity is all too often rooted in entitlement. We can often feel as if we deserve a certain job, life, and standard of living but in the global scheme of things if you grew up in a first world country you likely already won the genetic lottery. It's ok to show weakness and be human for a second as you get help. I guarantee it will come full circle and they will eventually need you back.
The world is dying of selfishness. Some of our first words as a child are "mine." An innate desire to possess things rather than give love. It's entirely hard to keep your love on and firing 100% of the time. Self preservation creeps in, jealousy, and the stress of life causing the fear of going without. The pride says "I earned this, and they are just lazy." But in a world plagued and limping from the cancer of selfishness, the conscious decision to see others needs as just as important as your own is a monumental cure. Few actually know what they are doing. We are just walking and driving around chasing money, credit scores, various materialism and more pervasively, security so we can continue to wander about searching for the meaning of what we are actually supposed to be doing. Fewer still have figured out that the biggest generator of happiness lives in the idea of leaving each person better than you found them. You woke up today, your heart was beating, you could have died in your sleep but you didn't. That heart pounds behind your ribs with each beat as an antagonistic anthem, that we haven't quit just yet. Time to be an outdoor cat, and get to living. You are alive. Act like it. Your ancestors hunted saber tooth tigers with merely sharpened sticks, stop acting like you are adopted.
I do not fear death, for I was dead for longer than I know. My problems only began once this business of being born got started. Joking aside we live in one of the most exciting times in human history. We have the answers to nearly every bit of knowledge sought out through over the centuries at our fingertips. Nearly everyone we know these days lives like a king of centuries past. We have access to air conditioning, automobiles, refrigeration, airplane travel and can crave any food you desire within reason and have it delivered to you in merely minutes. Take the airplane for example. It is now possible to travel around the world, across oceans and continents. A journey that literally took hundreds and thousands of years for humans to figure out how to cover, can now be sorted out in merely half a day and for a few hundred dollars. Remind yourself the next time you're sitting in a chair floating through the sky at 500 miles per hour while eating peanuts and sipping a whiskey at 30,000 feet that this same journey used to kill half your expedition party. Leaving the rest to cannibalize each other for survival as winter set in and the wheels on the wagon fell off. Maybe your life isn't panning out how you expected and it's hard to hear someone telling you that you live like a king while you might feel like a failure. The human brain adapts to luxury and beauty. I have this theory that the wealthier we get the harder it is to reach genuine happiness. It has been studied that suicide is more likely as one amasses more wealth, though I think it all depends on your mindset. I like to think that money makes you more of what you already are. If you are generous then it allows you to give on a larger scale. While if you are an arrogant entitled tool then having money simply allows you to tool about on a bigger more detrimental level. I am also a realist and know that money and power can change people so it's best you figure out who you are situating your priorities before wealth has a way of swaying you. The famous actor Jim Carrey once said "I wish everyone could experience the emptiness of being rich and famous so they could realize, money and fame don't inherently make you happy." There's something intrinsically wired into humans to work and contribute. I wouldn't wish 365 days a year of unstructured purposelessness on anyone no matter how much money you had stored away. It's often hard for the human brain to learn a lesson that it has not lived. It's difficult for someone that has not had a ton of money to see how being able to pay their bills and have a bit left over would not be a sure fire way to happiness. Far too many of us know the feeling all too well of having more month left at the end of the money. Bear with me in this analogy. When you see something you really desire in an advertisement or store window you think of how gorgeous the item is. You think how awesome those shoes would look, or how it would feel to drive that car. Maybe you even eventually save up enough money and make owning the item a reality. Now fast forward one year after owning that car or walking around in those shoes. My guess is that the purchase does not feel as shiny and awesome as it once did. The brain has adapted to the beauty and has wandered off to the next latest and greatest. Whenever I purchase anything I ask myself "Is this going to bring added happiness to my life or is it just a passing whim?" With food it is a relatively easy question to answer as my growling belly will go back to being a good little belly being seen but not heard. But with other purchases it can be a real gut check. In reality asking this question prevents me from buying frivolous impulse purchases. With a bit of self control I will make sure that the item is going to bring me some lasting happiness as when purchasing you are essentially trading your time for an object. While working we trade our time for an agreed upon amount of money, so while purchasing we essentially trade our time for goods and services. The second bit of wisdom entails only buying things that will create experiences. For this reason I candidly refer to money as "fun coupons." Having a roof over your head, that's pretty fun. Being able to buy food, put gas in your car, or go to a movie you have been waiting for to come out. All fun things right? Hence fun coupons.
After I have purchased something and the luster of the latest and greatest begins to wear off I force myself to remember how I felt when I first acquired the item. I try to channel what it was like to be a kid on Christmas and see that shiny new bike sitting next to the tree. I force myself to see my things as if I do not own them and just get to borrow them. It has a way of instilling gratitude and reminding me that everything is temporal. No one gets out alive, we are all just passing through to some degree.
Thrive we shall
