It always amazes me when I meet adults who are clearly working pretty hard at being unhappy.
Why would someone do that?
I mean, we have this one life, and sometimes good things happen and sometimes bad things happen. But given a choice of being happy or being sad...like, why would someone CHOOSE sad?
I'm not saying that you shouldn't feel your feelings. You know, allow yourself to be disappointed when something doesn't work out, or grieve when you or someone you know has a loss. I mean sometimes I grieve for a sec when the office fridge's Diet Coke is all expired.
Yuck.
But being crusty in general just seems like a lot of work to me.
When you're a kid, adults are always telling you that happiness is a choice and that no one else can "make" you feel a certain way. That always kind of bugged me and it was hard for me to understand. But as we grow up and experiment with what works best for us, I think most of us come to realize that external influences are too volatile and unpredictable to base our attitudes on.
I'm in no way perfect at this. I find myself pouting for the dumbest reasons. But I think I'm a pretty happy person, and I think it's because I want to be happy.
We all need to work at it, but some of us need to work a LOT at it.
Just sayin'.
And if we don't do it for ourselves, we should at least try to do it for the people who have to deal with us every day.
2 comments:
Amen! I believe I did a similar blog post not too long ago. It is just so true. Why be sad when you can be happy? Happy is so much more fun!
I like to be happy, with just a tinge of healthy skepticism. It makes things work. My 4 year old nephew; however, has decided he is going to be a grump. This has forced my mom to put a picture of a sunshine smiley face on a popsicle stick and whip it out whenever he is being lame. He always laughs because this is pretty silly. Mission accomplished. Perhaps we could incorporate something like that for adults?
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