Making happy out of what you can control

posted by Jeff | Monday, December 20, 2010, 8:33 PM | comments: 0

I think I mentioned in a recent post that I've recently found a level of happiness that I haven't had, maybe ever. After today, and excuse me if this is ambiguous, I found out that some of what I thought was going swimmingly, isn't. That's a real kick in the nuts, and it makes me angry, upset and fearful, all things I don't like to be.

My experiences in life have enabled me to generally achieve a level of awareness about things going on around me, and be generally aware of my own state in relation to the universe. I don't always like what I observe, but I do feel generally empowered to influence things. It's a skill that has served me well, and I can attribute a lot of my success (whatever that is) to it. There are a lot of things I can't control that have caused me a lot of stress (see: my house), but I don't generally blame anyone. I try to take responsibility for myself, even in light of extraneous circumstances.

But from time to time, you encounter situations where you ask yourself, "Is this a problem that I created or failed to manage, or is this external shit I can't control?" You can see the dilema there. On one hand you didn't do something right, and on the other it's just some component of the world not working with you. The reality is something in the middle a lot of the time, but it still seems like a continuum of either sucking at life or behing dishonest with yourself. Identifying when it really is just the world pissing in your Cheerios is hard.

With my current life issue, I find myself taking some responsibility, but after significant reflection, I feel as though there is a lot of arbitrary stuff going on that I can't control. That doesn't make me feel better about it, it just means I have to come up with a better game plan about how to deal with it. That's the hard part.

And don't worry... my little family is fine. No issues here in the Puzzoni household. :)


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