Be thankful..and things to be thankful for will magically appear


Laughing hard on Sunday coz Fuck Mondays
One of my best friends routinely chastises me for being 'too positive.' " Cut that shit out , Joel. You don't have to put a positive spin on everything dude!" she says over and over. And I think she does have a point. Though of course in writing this, I realize I'm doing that thing where you take a positive or valued trait and try and dress it up as a weakness. I do agree, but I figure, all things considered, that's not such a bad thing.

This past year has been a pretty shitty one. It was a year in which people passed away at an alarming rate. Not as statistics in some new story, but living moving people that I knew. that made me laugh, and wore glasses and ordered their food in a particular way. They are no more. Many people in my social circles started to wear the stress of life on their faces. Where once was a hopeful expectation of who we were to become and accomplish, there now inhabits a fearful almost exasperated sense that mediocre is probably as far as we'll go. 


Families split. Jobs lost. Finances became an issue as some prospered and other floundered and struggled to try and save face. Life happened.


So for me to actively seeking  a silver lining on the shit that has happened and that continues to happen is a good thing. It doesn't deny or undermine the blows that come with just being alive and trying to make it invite;  that's delusion. It  doesn't mean you're foolish or crazy, just that you realize that this world has more than enough bad news for you

That you, as magnificent and as brave and intelligent as you are will some day begin to wither away. That your neurons ill not fire as they did before.You will make sounds as you try and get out your ass out of a chair. One day you will be dumped or have to dump someone. You will fail. You will lose some thing, everything that you hold dear. Entropy is undefeated . Gravity is not defied. Father time always gets his man.

Not soo rosy huh?

So I say fuck it..Enjoy your life right now. If you're reading this congratulations..Half the human population is not doing as well as you are. You have someone whose life is made better simply because you walked in the room. You have a talent that you can offer humanity. You have a voice, s story and point of view that will add to the cosmic tapestry of existence. It may not mean more than the small circle of people you interact with but it matters. Magnitude is not a measure of importance.

It's cliched and very motivational speech-ish..but cliches are so for a reason. They're almost self evident and ironically become something we ignore because we think we already know.

Today I took a few minutes off to count my blessings. To think of the opportunities I have before me. To bask in the glow of the friends new and old, of the books I have yet to read , of the new job I have, of the fact that I write things and people actually read what is going on in this crazy mind of mine. I am grateful to goodness(I have to say, being non religious means that you don't really have someone to be thankful to, but you can be thankful to the universe, to those around you..and I think it means that since what you have is out of a mix of good fortune and the works of others, it becomes an imperative to do things for others), for all I have, all I will have..at this present moment.

I choose to focus on the good, on what it is I want to accomplish. For the strength to do what I need to do today to make my ideas and wishes for tomorrow a reality. I refuse to be think that I will be happy when..I am happy now because I have a lot to be happy about if I take the time to remind myself of that.


So as the last few minutes of my weekend fade away, I will try and not follow the playful advice of my chum to be a little less sunny about things, because I have demands waiting for me, I have a tough road this week, I have deadlines and responsibilities, I have hopes and concerns that could weigh me down. I don't think having a good attitude will hurt in helping me show em what's what.

Have a great week guys..

Be thankful and things to be thankful for will magically appear


Deuces.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Every Refuge has its price: My visit to the Prophet Mbonye- led Fellowship of Remnants

Image
I'm not really the kind of guy that's spontaneous. Many a companion has tried to get me to do things spur of the moment and had their enthusiasm slowly drained as I whipped out my calendar to see if I could spare the time for their aside. Want to go to the bar? -Better give me a day's notice. Want to have lunch today?Better shoot me a text before 8am. Want to come over to my place? Send an owl with a handwritten letter in triplicate at least 4 business days ahead! I'm just the type of person who generally knows what I'll be doing days in advance. It was therefore rather out of the ordinary for me to suddenly think one Monday afternoon - "Hey why don't I just go see what is going on at the Mbonye thing ? " I texted my friend and asked her if she'd want to go with me but true to adult life-arranging a time that worked for us both was a little difficult. But this played right into my wheelhouse. We finally set a date and I was excited. In
Read more

Dont Act. Just Think : A short lesson from 2023

Image
Friends, as the embers of another year flicker low, I feel a chill wind whispering through the cracks in the edifice we call progress. It's not the usual New Year's shivers, the anxieties about resolutions, the hollow clink of glasses filled with liquid courage. It is a deeper tremor, a confession from the soul. that's been ill at ease for a while. This year served up losses. From loved ones gone too soon, to opportunities dashed through no fault of my own, to the inescapable loss of contentment at living in step with the just the way life is. Never more has the phrase " personal is political " resonated so much. Never have I seen change, innovation, and hoe mounted everywhere but in the realm of communal decision making how we decide the relations of life between us. For years, I, too, sang the siren song of self-reliance, the gospel of "hard work saves us.". That's a bit f luck and surely we can all make it.I was intimately aware of the challen
Read more

The Disasterous Liberating Encounters of Love

Image
This is a brief story of a boy and his encounters with love  All quotes used are by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek Love as an event    "Love is a disturbance of the existing order, the intrusion of the impossible into the possible, the subversion of the symbolic order. It disturbs the reality we take for granted, and reveals that reality is not all there is, that there is always something more." Isn't it true that many of us fall in love and it is a complete disaster? You are moving along enjoying your life, hanging out with friends, playing sports, reading questionable books, and wondering where exactly your life is going but you are too busy enjoying the ride to ruin it with questions.  For the boy, it was in the way he was coming into his own, from nerdy to well still nerdy but able to fool most of the people some of the time that he had some cool aspects!! Women were starting to pay attention to this lad who'd just survived puberty but retained the earnestness
Read more