“It’s hard to be satisfied with life if you’re not satisfied with yourself.”
When you read it, it seems so simple, so true. Impossible to take action on, yet ridiculous if one doesn’t get its obvious message – quit being dissatisfied with yourself. It begs the question – should I be dissatisfied for being dissatisfied with myself? What are all these self-help books for, if I’m already satisfactory?
After I got done thinking that about this particular saying, something bigger crossed my mind. What crossed my mind is that it doesn’t matter how many of these I see or read or print or share with my friends or write about, if nothing tangibly changes for them or for me.
We can read all we want about letting go of anger, fear and sadness, loving ourselves, taking risks, opening up, etc. but until we change our minds and take tangible action, until we actually just LET go of the fear, sadness, and anger, until we HONOR ourselves, GIVE ourselves A BREAK, LOVE ourselves, RISK getting hurt, OPEN our hearts, STAND our ground, NOTHING is different.
Or maybe we DO change, because as another saying goes “The only thing that is constant is change.” Maybe what happens is that we go down one of two paths.
On the first path, maybe our opinion of ourselves goes down. We judge ourselves even worse than we judged ourselves before. We participate in our own isolation and feelings of low self-worth because not only are we angry, fearful, sad, closed, alone, and down-trodden, we must like it that way, right? That’s what we say to ourselves, because otherwise, wouldn’t we be DOING something? I mean here’s everything we NEED, and we’re not budging an inch. What is WRONG with us, doomed to live around all these happy people when the world WE live in sucks. And it’s trying to actively kill us with all this positive stuff we can’t seem to ever be fully on board with?!
OR
Maybe each one of these is another brick in a road, another light on our path, another member of a swelling choir, a beautiful chorus enlightening us, waking us up, filling us with the air of love and life so that when we’ve heard enough, we finally open our own mouths and join the swell of the song, moving forward, taking a chance, hoping those around us will keep us from going over the cliff edge. Perhaps we become the example that helps the next person who’s been spending time reading success stories, happy sayings, self-help books, talking to their friends, listening to positive podcasts, or printing out and pinning up happy sayings, like
“It’s hard to be satisfied with life, if you’re never satisfied with yourself.”
In the last 48 hours, although I think the decision has largely been coming for awhile, I chose which path I am now going to stay on. I might trip and get trampled or get a sock stuffed in my off-tune-singing mouth, but I’m on it.
Happy New Year to anyone and everyone who reads this. 🙂
~ cj 2014.01.02
P.S. pos-itive – I separated pos out of positive because POS also means Piece of Sh*t. haha. I made myself giggle with that one…soooo easily entertained.
P.S.S. – Yes, I’m sure I’ll still be writing pain-ridden, suicide-sounding, desperately heartbroken poems and essays…cuz writing them makes me happy. 🙂
Siege, you do make me smile. Your screed on change reminds me of another saying (enough with the sayings already):
The definition of stupidity is repeating the same process ad nauseam and expecting different results.
Happy New Year, Siege darlin’; smile, dammit!
The trick is to figure out when you’re repeating the same process ad nauseam, isn’t it. haha. Yep, that’s the trick.
It delights me that I make you smile, my friend.
That wa a POS-itive read. Lol. I knew what the Pos meant as soon as I saw it. I started laughing & thought to myself this is gonna be good! I wasn’t disappointed. For sure one of your best. Have a great 2014 my friend. 😉
haha. When I wrote that, I thought “I’ll bet Steve knows EXACTLY what POS means. AND I’ll be he knows I mean to separate them, too.” But just in case someone didn’t realize I meant to pull them apart, I decided to explain.
I’m glad you liked it. It was a bit different; not poetic so much. But I decided to start putting some other things up here, too, so this is part of that.
Thanx for always reading, Steve. I love it. And same to you on the great new year wish!
The purPOSe of a choir is to achieve harmony, and to support fellow members in singing their part. Sure, there are times when you go off-key. That’s when the members of the choir are there to guide you and keep you from falling over the edge of the cliff. Singing in the choir can be intimidating at first, because all the other members seem to have their shit together. But once your fear disappears, oh! the glorious music you’ll make!