Yesterday's News

I was up too early yesterday. I laid in bed, giving sleep a chance to come. When it didn't, I was almost glad. I enjoy my mornings. The gym's not open yet, phone calls would not yet be appropriate, there's nothing on the schedule. There's just me, a cup of coffee, and my favorite cat snuggling in my lap.

Life often feels like chaos. It's the ball of yarn that ends up in extra stitches, a few holes, and a few mismatched patterns while I'm trying to knit it into a scarf. It's the dinner that wanders away from what I planned it to be when I thought I had all the right ingredients. It's the house full of old, ugly wall paper and stained carpets that I'm hoping will be transformed into something that feels like home in less than two months.

Of course, I could (and I do) fixate on the failed scarf, the imperfect meal. I could worry about how all of those upcoming home projects are going to get done while I'm still living life. I could fixate on my personal happiness and whether or not I'm successful. But when I do (and I do all of those things), I always miss what is really important. Perfection and success are concepts that often lack workable, concrete definitions, so for me, they always seem out of reach when I am staring at them, fixating on them, wondering if I can be found somewhere where they are. And happiness? Of course, I'm all for it. But it's an emotion that has its place in a healthy life, just like anger, disappointment, guilt, and excitement. So setting happiness as a goal is like setting surprise or excitement as a goal. Which leads me to believe that happiness is not really the goal we're setting when we say it is.

One thing I am hashing out in my own life is that discomfort is as much a part of a healthy, satisfying life as happiness is, and to wish it away in favor of a constant feeling of happiness is to miss part of what it means to be human and what makes the sweet times so sweet. I'm realizing that the parameters of failure and success have very little to do with whether or not things go as planned, or what everyone thinks of me, or whether or not I am at or above the status quo. There are times when it is important to sit through, live in, and not wish away uncomfortable situations. No one ever gets better at running or weight lifting or painting or anything by determining to remain within a comfort zone because pushing outside of it would be undeniably uncomfortable. No one improves that way.

Interestingly enough, when I embrace those ideas and let go of my former efforts of measuring success, I feel much freer to live out who I am, something no one else can do. And that feels good.