Festive Ponder

Ahhhh festive periods, especially those at the end of a year, has this effect of making people ponder over their lives.

I hear about people saying they feel empty in their lives or unhappy etc. It seems like a modern syndrome to be unhappy. It is pleasantly unusual to meet happy people.

This is only the people who will even admit it.

Most people don’t even admit it or even realize it. It’s just “something bugging me, something missing” and dismissed off. The problem is, it becomes quite an irritating itch.
Eve is no guru because she is also guilty but Eve made a few observations. To Eve, emptiness and unhappiness comes from a few ways:

1) One does not have what one wants.
2) What one has is not what one wants i.e. settling for less
3) One does not even know what one wants.

Sounds cliché right? You will be amazed at how we humans fail to grasp the most basic and simplest of things.

The result is a state of unrest in the mind. Some people do something about it. Most live with it. Eve calls it the shipwreck analogy. It is like one after a shipwreck. One floats on a piece of wood hoping to reach shore. One will not die but the journey is not pleasant.

Talk about journey. I wrote about setting a goal and beating a path there versus taking a longer route where one can smell the flowers. The balance is always intricate. How does one get to where one wants to go, provided he or she knows the destination, and yet find space to enjoy the journey? Eve is trying to enjoy the journey more…”go with the flow of things more” as they call it.

However, Eve also realizes not all flowers are healthy. Some may look nice on the outside but poison you to no end when you take it in long enough. Eve does not doubt the need to stop and smell the flowers but one must know when the path itself may no longer be beneficial anymore. Sometimes one gets so distracted or poisoned that one loses sight of where wants to go.

The ironical thing is, some even realize it’s not right anymore but continue to stay in the same place. It is far easier to stay than to change. Putting one’s foot down to say no is often much harder than it seems because change is almost often a challenging experience even if it is better for the long run. Eve has met friends who would rather accept bad behavior that will hurt them in the long run because they are not willing to wait.

Eve is coming to terms with this herself because Eve realises that by accepting bad things means this is how much worth Eve gives herself – little.

We often underestimate how seemingly unrelated or small regular doses of anger and frustration do to us. People always say childhood has an important bearing on one’s adult life. Eve totally agrees.

The same goes for staying in a state of unhappiness. The longer it is, the more poisonous it becomes and the harder for it to go away. I use poison because that is exactly what it is. It even affects one’s health. At this point, one can probably see what Eve is getting at.

Yes…settling for less, unhappiness, emptiness and all things alike…can be a comfort zone.