Questions I Ask Myself
What my life should look like…
vs.
What my life already looks like…
I thought about this while standing at my kitchen counter shoving food down my throat, while at the same time thinking about cleaning the kitchen.
I had made a meal that actually turned out great. But yet, I was unavailable to enjoy it, bc in my mind, I have been trained to know what enjoyment is by what it looks like, and in this case, I figured it should look like a clean kitchen with a stable-looking person standing in it.
Where did I get this idea?
I think this bill of goods was first sold to me from television and magazines, and then sold back to me again by grown-ups who’d also been sold the same bill of goods.
And the promise and premise of the goods?
Happiness is something that looks like happiness—a still-life to be longed for, pursued, and purchased, if you have the means…
But the truth is, life isn’t still. It’s constantly moving, and moving in flux. And any vision of ‘happiness’ that we have is constantly being mucked up by the reality of life’s internal and external chaos.
But even so, many of us choose to hold on tight to our visions of happiness. And then decide that it must be life’s movement that needs to be controlled, scripted and choreographed, so that it doesn’t keep messing up these still-lives that we are working so hard to assemble.
But what about how we feel? Where do our feelings fit into this bill of goods?
Well, from what I’ve noticed, *to feel* doesn’t look like anything, bc it’s experienced. And it’s experienced privately. And our feelings can’t really be photographed.
And if I do attempt to compare my feelings about the ever-changing-unscripted-and-unchoreographed-movements-of-my-life to what I think my life *should* look like, I’m probably going to experience anxiety.
And I will probably try to cope with this anxiety by continuing to rearrange how things look in my life, since that’s what I’ve been taught happiness is.
And then I will wait for my circumstances to be looked at through another set of eyes and hope that they will agree that my circumstances do indeed resemble what I’ve been sold in that old bill of goods.
But what if I don’t get that stamp of approval? What if the people and circumstances around me keep messing up my attempts to control and mold my chaos so that it looks a certain way?
Well, I’m probably going to continue being anxious, and I’m probably also going to get resentful, burned out and pissed off.
And this doesn’t sound like a very good way to spend the moments of my life.
So what I’m thinking is, to heal from this ever-spiraling cycle, I might want to ditch that old bill of goods and make awareness the priority over happiness.
Awareness is very different from happiness.
You cannot be sold awareness. And awareness cannot be bought. Awareness is something that’s available to anyone who remembers to access it.
It’s noticing the movement and chaos around us and within us, along with our feelings about it.
And it’s deepening our awareness ever so slightly, so that we can suddenly notice that there’s actually some beauty in our chaos, some wisdom and compassion in our chaos, and that our feelings about this chaos can actually move us like poetry.
Awareness is a way to turn abysmal circumstances into scripture, any hole in the wall into an unfolding chapter, and any feeling about it into something profound.
Awareness turns who we already are into the meaning makers of our lives life instead of giving that job over to circumstances, people and contexts that don’t even know who we are.
Awareness shifts our actions from trying to make our lives look a certain way to connecting with the real experiences and feelings within us and around us, and being pleasantly surprised by the unexpected things they have to offer.
—JLK
