soap box: life is so vanilla...(and I am sorry this post is sooo long)
On the way to the airport, Mike and I were talking about the recent suicide of a football player. Mike was quoting the oh'so popular quote, "more money... more problems! All these rich people are miserable because of all the problems that money brings."
And I had to agree, but really disagree. Now, I want to acknowledge that Mike and I talked about mental health, but in order to jump to my point - I'm not going to go into it.
In general (excluding mental health issues), I think the real issue is that people acquire what they've wanted their entire lives and what they thought would bring them happiness and an exciting life and then they hit "life's disappointment."
(If I were rich, I would be happy and could afford a crazy fun life. If I had a life partner, I would be happy and we would have fun every night. If I could have a baby, I would be happy, loved, and my days would be full)
Life disappointment fact numero uno: You cannot escape yourself. The issues that you have today, you will have when you are rich, skinny, married, a parent, etc.
Life disappointment fact numero dos: 80% of our days are pretty darn vanilla. Now, there are going to be exciting days but overall most of us live pretty standard lives: get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to sleep - do it all over.
Now, some people fill life's disappointment with "excitement" fillers, which tend to lead to addictions. You know, people try to booze-away, party-away, sex-away, achieve-away, spend-way, eat-away their boring lives, so everyday feels "fun." Because God-knows, if every day doesn't feel like a highly-edited reality television series, a movie, or a romance novel - then our lives SUCK! So, we have to go out and make each day exciting and strive for all the material things that make everyone else so happy and exciting. Then once we are living the lives of "the others," we sit at home and realize "oh crap, I am still miserable!" So, either we decide to hoard more or we take more drastic motives.
But in my 26 years on this earth, I've found that the people with the most joy in their lives are those that are okay with living vanilla (I got this saying from my pastor). I genuinely believe that too many of us expect life to be exciting and perfect every day. Please believe I fall hard into this category, but the happiest people that I meet are the ones that find joy in the mundane. This joy doesn't stop them from "wanting" material things or "more" out of life, but they recognize that those things will not bring happiness and will not change their inner-being. They stop waiting for that new car and realize that joy is today, joy is now, joy is simple, joy is in this 95 Corolla, joy is in imperfect me, joy is in being able to spend an hour with my loved one, joy is in this life. I truly believe a relationship with Christ and my mother have taught me this lesson (although I have to remind myself daily). It's like every day, I try to (another steal from my pastor) expect nothing and be grateful for everything. I have to remind myself that "yeah, this day contained nothing out of the ordinary (it was pretty darn vanilla), but it was extremely special."
I dunno, I just really feel like the more that we enjoy our days, our lives, ourselves - the easier it is to not allow ourselves to go down the slippery slope of putting our happiness in the next big thing... thus (hopefully) avoiding the BIG letdown... maybe I am simply talking to myself but just wanted to share :)
Please if you have 10 min. listen to this speech:
(If you only have 10 min. - rewind to 15 min. and only listen until 25 min.) I promise you, it may be perspective changing, which in turn is life changing.
