What Defines Happiness Anyway?
Relationships, breakups, finding yourself advice.
Everyone measures happiness in different ways. Some say making tons of money will make you happy, some say fame or something, from sage to a murderer each wants something out of life no matter how sorted or twisted it could be. True blessing of the happiness from the god or guilty pleasure but who cares anyway! Each day each one of us gets up with the hope to find the best out of the mystery of that day. Most of the time we are chasing something because we believe that something is going to make our life happier and when we are busy chasing that something. Life slips past, always... well most of the time.
How many mistakes we have made? How many things, that we think we should have done differently or in my case how many times I wish I had some more will power to do just about everything right. But I also have to be aware that wishing something like that will make me unsatisfied with my life thus unhappy and if I don't make mistake how will I learn? We all need to learn through our own mistakes only some genius few of us learn from the mistakes others make...lol.
I would say, to have tremendous will power you need "tremendous will power"! Yet each day I meet people, all sorts of them and they all have one thing to teach, that is, one may not know who he or she is everyone has something unique; positive or negative but unique all the same it's up to us to learn from them. Pain makes us realize our true potential, experiences and circumstances carves the person inside us, we judge people based on what we would do. If we were them in the given circumstances but what we forget most of the time is one crucial fact that they are different people with different carving, and that makes them different people responding to the same situation in a different way than us.
God has given us a beautiful life with so many beautiful moments everyday. All you have to do is, be receptive of his gifts whether good or bad coz what we think of as a bad thing to happen to us could be a blessing in disguise. We fall and then we get up that's how life is. It's so simple yet very much complicated, it's your choice how you want to live it. We have to be receptive of everything happiness and pain all the same, embrace them. That's how life is colorful. The way I see it if there was only happiness how boring life would have been as they say a child who faces a lot of hardship in the childhood gets mature faster than others, I don't advocate a child facing hardship when they should be out and about playing. I guess what I mean to say is pain or hardship brings awareness which means maturity, gives us understanding and most importantly makes us appreciative of small pleasure and happiness that each day brings to us which we normally don't even notice while we go on living. Waiting and hoping for some big happiness to blow us away. Every day we learn something. Everything that happens in our lives teaches us something, and without awareness we won't be able to learn anything. Awareness helps us make right choice if not or at least doesn't let us make the same mistake. We have tough times so we can appreciate light moments. We have pain so we can understand what happiness is and recognize it when it comes along instead of chasing something which we think will make us happy which might never come our way.
Our life is all about the choices we make every day, now if you choose to not live and take control of your own life just because something happened or someone's hurt you, who is to blame apart from yourself, because it is not gonna help. And as far as I see it human spirit is one amazing thing and it always comes to your rescue when your survival is at stake, physical or emotional. You just have to be open and willing to embrace changes that are taking place around you within you. You need to make a conscious effort to see positive things happening in your life and in the lives of people who you care about and appreciate it. It should not only for the people who are coming out of a difficult time or grieving the loss of loved ones but each one of us. Seeing world from a little different perspective, I feel, is good for us because happiness or sadness or any other emotions for that matter is important in some or other way. The world is beautiful, life indeed is beautiful, it just takes a choice that you make as to how you want to see it.
A relationship should free you make you a better person but it goes both ways you cannot expect someone to give you every happiness in the world and make you the best possible person in the world when you are not that person yourself to someone else. Now there is no measure which can decide when it's enough that everyone cares about things they possess or love but there are few who can do it unconditionally. Love might be unconditional but a relationship is always conditional. Everyone gets into it thinking it's gonna bring the best out of them and make their lives better. Somehow some of them get what they want in it some of them don't. World is surviving on balance, relationships are no different. We should always remember we are two different individuals with different carving and mind bonded with a beautiful emotion as love and respect and treat it the same way with love to that special person and respect for who he or she is. Relationship should be a celebration of your individuality but together.
We get devastated because a relationship ends not only because it was all what we wanted it to be. It never is, but also for the fact that it's going to bring another turning point a big change in our lives sometimes even change the way we see ourselves, it happens to all of us we all have to go through the hurt, betrayal, lies and pain may be from a lover to a friend sometimes even the family only the degree of impact varies. Expectation that comes with the relationships we were born with or that we establish in the journey of life kind of disables us to see that risk factor would be high too but it's what makes life worth living.
We can't expect people to be someone who they can't be or give something they are not genetically capable of giving and neither should we spend time and energy asking why they can't. It's because they just can't! Some of them don't even understand it. Everyone is not born gymnast now if we expect and bar hopping beer belly guy who can't even touch his toe to do somersault then it's our mistake isn't it? Yeah you can train them, for humans everything is achievable but it's only possible if the person himself or herself wants to make that change otherwise it's too much work for you without outcome.
You can't control the choices other people make or you can't change things which involves another human being but what you can do is control the choices you make or change things that you can change. When you learn to be happy with yourself you attract positive energy and people around you tend to be happy too, we tend to rely on other people to understand us. We make them our reason for happiness but what I have realized is unless you don't understand yourself how in the god's name can you expect someone else to understand you. Or if you can't be happy within yourself it's a losing battle that someone else's gonna make you happy.
It may sound selfish but the truth is everyone is selfish in their own way we are just too embarrassed to admit it considering the negativity attached to it. But if you think logically when we are happy with ourselves or when we understand ourselves, in turn we are more aware of others and who they are. And as we don't need them to be there to make us happy they will be there in our lives out of choice not because of our need which means less pressure on either side. So though selfish but I think it's quite logical unless of course the other half is a chronic liar or cheater and if that's so they won't be someone we want in our lives right?
I still remember the time my heart was broken. I was scared of being alone, because I didn't know the world apart from him. Big city, friends zero to none, apart from his friends; no place to go to, thousand miles away from the family. The next two months following the breakup was the hardest time that I guess that I have ever been through. I felt empty, I looked like walking ghost, I felt like one. Nothing made sense in the beginning apart from the fact I had this big void in the pit of my stomach which keeps getting bigger and I have no way out. I guess most of the time I was in the auto mode where I would respond but I was not even sure what or how it was that I was supposed to respond.
I completely gave myself to work because that's the only time that I felt bit sane, weekends were dreadful, I would wake up in the middle of the night howling because the pain in my heart was almost unbearable that it felt almost equal to physical pain and I would pray but not asking him back but asking for the strength to bear all and come out of it. I wanted to do something anything to help myself but I just didn't know what and how. I would surf the net for the articles like "how to survive break up" and try to find comfort in the fact that I was not alone there are thousands of other people going through the same thing. Now I feel that I was like a drowning person who doesn't know how to swim and was trying struggle when thrown in the middle of the ocean but determined not to get drown. I was like one lunatic who is just saying and doing things which doesn't make sense at all. Only thing that makes sense to me now is the fact I was fighting with myself and with the situation which was going ugly and painful day by day to survive or at least trying to let go with dignity and failing miserably.
I was afraid of change I was afraid that the life I came to know and define myself for almost three years is over, gone with me watching. I was afraid I would no longer be able to define myself. I was afraid of facing my family heck I was afraid of everything which was to come next. Today I think that the pain I went through was good somehow as I learned a lot, most of all I became aware of me inside. Now I am more tuned towards myself who I didn't think existed.
During the hours of desperation when mind stopped working and heart was busy grieving it was me who fought back, it didn't let me go somewhere to crawl and die. Now I don't think my heart and mind which defines me it's something else, I don't know soul may be but I do know it's not the heart and mind it's beyond that.
Everyone deals with loss and pain differently. I guess you just learn to live with it after sometime once you have accepted that nothing you could do or want to do about that. The biggest thing that makes a difference is when you realize you did everything you could and there was nothing else that you could do and let it leave on time to heal you. As long as you keep trying to forget, it is not going to help. I guess what helps is to accept what you feel and let it go just don't try anything. Give yourself time and space to grow as an individual. It happened to me most of the time I was in the same city there were a lot of things that would remind me of him every day. And what I did was smile when I thought about him and suddenly I would feel better. It sounds weird but it worked and I would get on with what I was doing without reacting on it. I guess what I meant to say is I stopped reacting altogether.
Letting go is not always easy, you have memories you have friends who remind you of the same person hell at the time everything around you seem to be reminding you the face you want to forget, of the past you want to let go. I think it starts from yourself you might get sad, hurt and angry or all at the same time dust only settle a little when acceptance to what happened and that you have to find your own way sets in that's when you know the process has begun . I started with the expectations. I started giving up my expectations about that person, I stopped asking questions to him most importantly to myself as to why and what. We hurt when we expect the person to understand the acknowledge the pain and misery they have caused to us genuinely and when that person fails to do so it hurts more, but then I realized if the person was capable enough to understand that he would not have put me through all this to start with!
I still feel sad sometimes of what could have been but I also do know that as he was free to make his choice I am free to make mine, I can choose to be miserable thinking that love of my life slipped from my hand like buttered bear trust me he was a huge guy....no kidding but I can choose to look past my pain and hurt and embrace the fact that I am free now without the fear that he would cheat again.
I have met lot of people since then more than I did in three years; I have made friends I have been to so many places. I opened myself to new experiences. I have met few amazing women. Every day I have learned to go out with zeal to learn something new. One thing I strongly believe now when you are determined to get things right for you or to help yourself the universe helps you too. I strongly believe that the tests that god puts you through he doesn't put you through them without the armor or if he thinks you can't make it, all you need is to open yourself and face it and recognize it and embrace it.
No matter how good you are no matter how much you try, if the other person doesn't want to see it or acknowledge it they won't and you shouldn't blame them because they are not responsible for your happiness, you are and if you yourself don't care about what you want, or stand up for your own self, then it's amazing you expect someone else to understand your sacrifice. Ultimately it's your responsibility towards your own self that you stand up for yourself when you are being railroaded. It's a universal truth you can't please everyone no matter what, even if you are almost godlike, Poor god too gets blamed all the time lol. So it's for you to decide what you can give what you can't.
Try and break routine every now and then it keeps you moving and life is all about moving and it doesn't matter who you are, a person in a serious relationship, single or housewife or whatever is your status it helps. If you break routine from time to time. Try it and see how good you feel about yourself when you let yourself go and do things you don't get time to do or usually don't do because of your responsibilities and commitments. Keep pushing yourself life is all about making mistakes and laughing at it. And moving on with wisdom of that mistake.. be creative in even making mistakes lol. And if you have someone who celebrates that passion and stupidity with you, appreciate it... But then as I said life is all about being unpredictable...
Life indeed is beautiful once you stop stopping yourself... Marking milestones in a journey called life...
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