I just had a conversation with my sister over the phone about why life sucks so hard. She's got her master's, can speak Japanese, has traveled all over the world (that bitch), and now she's a hostess at P.F. Chang's. WTF?? Obviously, Little Miss Magic is not a happy camper.
She's got a friend who works for the CIA. That friend hates her job, says it's not worthwhile. Not exactly sure what she does at the CIA, since they're so secretive and all, but I'm pretty sure I'd jump at the chance to work for the CIA. It's like one big government-sanctioned gossip factory. You get all the goods on everybody from Elvis to Kim Jong Il. Sadly, my, um, background? makes me ineligible to work for them. Fuckers.
And Lord knows I hate my job. You may think working in TV is cool, even maybe the news part of it, just a little bit, but no. Really. No.
Anyway, I gots to thinking. (Dangerous pass-time, I know) Why is everybody so fucking miserable? And I think it's because it goes against our nature. I'm not sure happiness is human nature. We always want more, more, more. Never settle for anything but than the best.
My mom has an anecdote about settling; long story short, don't settle, because all you'll ever see is what you don't have, and it'll make you miserable. But maybe settling is a good thing. It has a really shitty connotation, you think of it as just giving up, giving in, but that's not what it means. It means to satisfy, to soothe, to make stable, to agree. As in: to settle down, to settle your nerves, to settle an argument.
So you're unsettled? You want more? We all want more. But when does it stop? When does more become enough? I think to be truly happy, we have to learn to settle. To accept what we have right now. To look around at what we've got and say "ya know what, I'm doing aight". Maybe it's not what you thought it would be, maybe it's not where you saw yourself (working at P.F. Chang's), but it's real. It's life. It is. So just sit back and enjoy it. Learn to enjoy it. And stop fucking whining already. You're giving me a headache.
I need more aspirin.
I just caught the author of this book on the radio yesterday:
ReplyDeleteThrilled to Death: How the Endless Pursuit of Pleasure is Leaving Us Numb.
His take:
"[Anhedonia] is the gradual shutting down of the brain's pleasure system because it's overused, over-stimulated. And at a certain point, that shutdown is so profound that technically, it becomes a clinical depression."
I bet that person at the CIA would "jump at the chance to work in TV".
We're inundated with MTV Cribs and reality TV where we're made to think they're happy and inversely we're to be unhappy b/c we don't have that stuff.
It's about being happy with what you have: content, but not complacent.
There is a saying an old frient used to tell me:
ReplyDelete"Happiness is not having what you want, it's wanting what you have."
Blog Hopping...
Moondance seems right on there. We're acculturated from very young to want more -- first it's a bike, then a birthday with two digits in it, next thing it's a wedding, a baby, and so on. I try to stop and remind myself every so often that it's not the end result I'm working towards, it's the daily life I'm living that will make me happy or not.
ReplyDeleteI like your definition of 'settled.' I think I'm getting there.
ReplyDeleteJohn: Well said! I could have saved everyone a lot of time by just writing those 4 simple words, "content, but not complacent". My apologies to all!
ReplyDeleteMoondance: If only we didn't want so damn much. Thanks for stopping in. Come back soon!
Mommytime: Some stupid movie had the line, "Live in the now, man!! Live in the now!!". I always used to repeat that as a joke, but now that I'm older, it's not funny anymore.
Tara: I wish I could get there myself. But I'm trying, I'm trying. Let's hope I get there before I'm dead! That would be just my luck, too.