Meaningful Misery
How hard I try to get out of my bed all shining and happy.
How quickly I want my dreariness to wash away as soon as I take a shower.
How much I hate myself; the times I undergo any negative emotions.
Why wouldn’t I when everyone around me is chasing after happiness?
That happiness which they want without undergoing any bit of negative emotions.
Unfortunately, we feel a range of emotions in one single day. Interestingly, most of those are feelings of embarrassment, boredom, anxiety, doubt, anger, and guilt.
How happy would we be if we could dial and turn up happy at our will? We wish!
We scan through all the books related to the pursuit of happiness and never realize how those books had made the writers taste frustration dozens of times before going for the final print.
We tend to take happiness as an end goal. Rather it should be a continuous process; feeling the present, asking ourselves with curiosity even during those times when we aren’t feeling that good about ourselves.
Here, when I talk about being happy, I don’t mean Googling “What should I do to find my best self back?”
Rather, simply being curious about the triggers; going back to reflect on the times when we had left any feelings unaddressed before going to bed.
We all have feelings that we detest. But happiness lies somewhere in between the ability to acknowledge the reason of our detesting and then accepting it.
The process is hard yet gratifying. And sometimes acknowledging negative emotions could just be enjoying every drop of the shower, while acceptance could be so sad that we cry hiding behind those very drops.
We all carry our beaming self, unaware of how difficult we all are. Rather than hating ourselves, happiness might be in the process of seeing a part of our difficult self in every happy soul.
Social psychologist Brock Bastain says “Feeling at times sad, disappointed, envious, lonely—that isn’t maladaptive, it’s human.”
And sometimes trying to acknowledge and accept these vulnerable emotions help us find ourselves: what our intentions and attention are on; what do we truly value; what do we find meaning in.
Importantly, here, when I am writing this, I am not an all sorted out woman. I am someone suffering from hormonal imbalance and go through sudden changes of emotions. But I am learning to accept them; breathe slowly and feel the present moment. Though pandering on the clouds of emotions is what I do mostly, I am at least trying to live a meaningful life accepting these miseries. If I with my imbalanced hormones can at least try this process, you with balanced ones can thoroughly enjoy it.
