Splashing In Puddles of Sand

Everybody

I've spent the last few days contemplating a phrase: 'Everybody loves your life, except you...'

I heard it a couple of days ago, not being directed to me, it was somewhere in the background and it caught my attention and got me thinking. It's another one of those 'the grass is always greener' phrases which is spot on. It's so easy to lose focus and forget how good life really is. I've had a bloody boring few months, I've just been lost since August. I'm out of college and have no idea what the future holds, or what I want it to hold. I've become distanced from practically all of my friends because we all just seem to be in different places in life. I've been working a job that I feel over-qualified for, leaving me bored and frustrated. And while I manage to transition into the working world easier than I thought, and I get along very well with everyone at work, I still haven't made close friends. I have a great time at work, I talk to so many people, we laugh, we play practical jokes, we really genuinley have a good time. BUT I know that when I finally walk out of the office for good (in 5 weeks!) that I wont see any of them again. It annoys me that it's so hard to make a friend who really cares. I hate that I can feel so popular yet so alone.

So in the months after leaving San Francisco, I found it far too easy to sit in a corner feeling sorry for myself. Feeling like the world is dark and lonely, like people are evil and have no feelings, like I'm just another body in an over-populated Earth. It's nice to think you are the only person in the world sometimes. But then you get to a slightly better place in life and you think about things, about your lows, about your highs, and you realize how fickle the human mind is. Life can't be perfect all the time. If it was perfect, we wouldn't appreciate it. That's why there is life, and death, and pain, and suffering, and even injustice. We cant experience everything, sometimes we have to learn from other people and their situations.

Sometimes I need to stop everything...stop my life...stop my thinking and contemplating and introversion...and think about it. Think about the places I've been. Think about the people I've met along the way. Think about the moments of uncontrollable, unstoppable laughter. Sometimes even the moments of uncontrollable tears make me smile. I have to think about all the times that people have said to me 'you have such a cool life!' I have to think about the times I have told myself 'I have such a cool life!' When I can get out of my pity zone and think about my life, it really is good. It really is GREAT, and I have NOTHING to complain about.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded not to zoom in too much. We need to be reminded that the fact that we got a coffee that was an inch shy of the top is not the end of the world, that when all the traffic lights seem to be turning yellow right before we get to them is not someone's personal vendetta against us. We need to be reminded that those days where 'nothing else could go wrong' could be a hell of a lot worse, because the fact that we've got two bills to pay and we couldn't find a parking space wouldn't seem so bad if you were lying in a hospital, or standing watching your city being bombed, or waiting for a phone call to hear if your kidnapped friend is still alive...

So I guess there has to be some middle-ground where we live our lives. We cant always focus on ourselves, yet we cant always focus on the world either. We have to be able to allow ourselves to feel sorry, to feel sad, but remember that when our world feels like it's breaking apart and we cant hold on for much longer, that some other people aren't given the luxury of holding on...

posted by Oreo @ 12:19 AM