Life and the Pursuit of Happiness

Hello all. I have had an idea ruminating around in my head for quite a long time now. I thought I would try and organize my thoughts here.

Life, man, it's so tough. Glennon Doyle calls it "brutiful" which is a combination of the words brutal and beautiful. Life is so full of contradictions. Joy and pain, love and loss, happiness and sadness, heartache and fullness. Everything is a contradiction. Which, as you know, we need in order to truly understand the meaning in life. We can't appreciate the joy if we haven't experienced the pain. Glennon also says, "First the pain, and then the rising." We must walk through the valley of pain and loss and degradation and fear in order to rise from the ashes of our experiences and truly grow and change and learn. I think of the refiner's fire mentioned in the scriptures. We are the gold that must be put through the refining process of the fire in order to be made more flawless. More whole. It is so interesting to think that each person in the world is going through this process. We all are being refined, whether we choose to allow that process to change us into a greater and higher being is up to us. Not everyone chooses to see this as a blessing. It's almost impossible to do so when we are in the fire. If you're burning, all you can think of is the burn. Slow or fast, it still hurts. Not to mention the light from the fire is so bright that we often close our eyes and that makes it impossible to see the other side of the fire.

And here is the thing in particular about modern life. Most of us, at least in this and other first world countries, have our basic needs met. We no longer live on farms where we have to wake up before dawn to make food for our husbands to eat before they head out into the fields to tend the animals and crops that will keep us and our families alive for the coming months. If they were lucky, farmers a few hundred years ago might have had an excess to sell for a small yearly profit so they could buy luxuries like windows for their log homes or extra livestock as insurance in case something happened to their main work horse or cow. We have access to food, clean water, new clothes on a daily basis, soap, cars, computers, phones, and the list goes on and on. We know that we are in the minority. There are still people in the world who have none of those things. They live their lives not knowing where there next meal will come from or wearing clothes that are years old and worn through because there simply isn't money or materials for anything new. But this very modern problem creates its own list of new problems. 

As a result of our very privileged modern life, we now live our lives increasingly inside our own heads. We spend hours each day on computers or phones, (which is a smaller version of the computer) and by doing this, we increasingly are perceiving the world to be the place that we are creating inside our own skulls. For example, say that your Facebook newsfeed is filled with mostly political posts. Which I am sure none of  you can relate to... :) And say that you log in to your Facebook page 3 times a day. Once in the morning, once at lunch and once at night. Most of us probably check Facebook more than that depending on your schedule and we may stay logged in for seconds, minutes or even hours at a time. So at least 3 times a day you are seeing nothing but mainly political posts. Some you agree with, lots that you don't agree with and some that are funny or entertaining. All of that goes into your head. You can't forget what you have seen. So you begin to perceive that the world is a highly political place and that is all that anyone cares about. But, what if you log in to Facebook and all your friends only post about their kids or their animals. Kind of, like what it used to be for everyone. All you see is so-and-so had a baby and named it Benny or your friend from high school got a new puppy. Your head gets filled with nothing but babies and puppies and you hear people complaining about the politicized world we live in and you think they are nuts cause all you see are babies and puppies all day. Regardless of where we are on this spectrum, what we see and what we take into our heads creates our point of view of the world. And we each have a completely unique perspective. I have to remind myself that my husband doesn't have all the same Facebook friends that I do and his newsfeed looks nothing like mine. I saw my brother-in-law scrolling through his newsfeed one night at my sister's house and it was all hunting videos and outdoor gear for buy/sell/trade and 4-wheeling and conservative politics. I can assure you that my newsfeed looks like none of those things. We are completely different people and we have created the environment we want to in our online profiles. That, then becomes the way that we perceive the world. 

There are pros and cons to this. I am someone who is severely affected by the environment around me. I am an empath to the 10th degree. I absorb emotions and attitudes of the people around me and that can have a severe affect on my mood and levels of anxiety or happiness or whatever the dominant aura is. I have had to teach myself to filter. I cannot allow only the negative or sad because it will overtake me. I will live my life in a dark hole of depression and anxiety and will be completely unable to really concentrate on the world around me and what is actually in front of me. So, I unfollow. I unfriend. And I don't feel bad about it. Because at the end of the day, I create the environment I am a part of. If I want to be good and do good, I have to surround myself with good. Now, on the other hand, I do not live my life in an ignorant fashion. I follow current events and politics. I remain informed. I donate to causes and I support people who can't support themselves. I just had to stop reading every single sad news story. I know the depth of the sadness and the evil in this world. And I am doing all that I can to help eradicate it. I just can't live my life with it in my face all day every day. Again, we create the world that we choose to live in. It is almost all in our heads. 

Another thing that I do to try and combat the heavy emotions that come from seeing the world through social media, which is seeing the world from literally thousands of other perspectives that may or may not make sense to you, is to live in the actual now. I took a yoga class once that was a meditative yoga class. It was all about calming yourself and the teacher kept repeating a phrase like this: "yoga takes you to the center of the actual present moment, the only place where life actually exists." I can't stop thinking about that! Life actually exists only right now in this very moment! All of the other things are the way that we remember them. We perceive things happened a certain way or we hope for things that will happen in the future but the only thing that is actually true is what is happening right now! Incredible to think about. So, I try so hard to lessen the time where I am living my life in front of a screen. Make the present moments count because all of the present moments will add up to what will become our whole lives. If someone is "listening" to you but staring at their phone, do you feel like they are there with you? Fully? I sure don't. I try to leave my phone in my bag when I go to restaurants and when I am in the car. I pull it out to snap photos but I try not to aimlessly scroll Instagram or Facebook while I am with my kids and we are having an experience. We have all even gotten to the point where we will sit and scroll while we also have the tv on. That is so much going on around us that is filling up our heads with noise! How on earth can we form meaningful connections with anyone, including ourselves, with all of the noise?? I love social media. It is an amazing way to stay connected to others and be lifted by their experiences and lives, but we have to make sure we are aware of the dangers of only living life inside our own heads.

Mental illness is a rampant issue in our time. I believe that this has a lot to do with the fact that we have so much time to just THINK! When time is filled with surviving, you don't just sit around and think about how sad you are or how much anxiety it gives you to talk to strangers. Both of those things are personal examples, by the way. We have become a nation of overthinkers. And when you are just thinking all day about all of the ways that what you love can be taken from you, you start to have anxiety that it's going to happen and you start taking precautions to prevent it from happening, (which is good to a certain extent, for safety) but when it overtakes you and you never want to leave the house because this world has gone to you-know-where and you can't even go see a movie, or go to a mall, or school or a concert without the possibility of being shot by a gunman... you will never want to leave your house again. I know, cause I feel this way a lot. All of those things have happened. And that's why it's so hard. Cause I know if they happened to me I couldn't really do anything about it. We can't control other people and that has become a very scary thing to be faced with. But, when we choose good. When we choose to show love over fear, when we make intelligent and safe choices based on our circumstances and hope for the best, we can still live amazing and fulfilling lives. We have to constantly seek for the balance. 

All of this is one long way of saying; LIFE DOESN'T HAPPEN IN YOUR HEAD!! IT HAPPENS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. So, make the life that is in front of you the absolute most fulfilling and exciting and loving and open and joyful and hopeful experiences that you possibly can. YOU have the power to create the world you live in. 

Our actual worlds are quite small. And if we all spent time really working hard to create the best world that is right in front of us, we will be building on the rock that is world peace. It seems like an unreachable task when you think of the whole world. We would never be able to do it all by ourselves. So, if we create a peaceful world in our minds and right in front of us, we will be building a world that can be peaceful for each other and that is the only way we can truly affect the changes that we need. 

I am working to make my corner of the universe one of compassion, love, understanding, acceptance, learning, sharing, justice, celebration, beauty, happiness, while also experiencing the pain and sorrow that this world brings and knowing that I am being refined. I will never be completely finished but I know I am being molded into the best possible version of myself. I hope you all find yourselves on a similar quest and that it is possible to enjoy the journey!

Love and light, 

Stef