there are some things in life that i am fairly certain about. first, coffee is better black. second, none of the books in the twilight saga needed to be as long as they are. third, i am crappy at writing blogs with any kind of regularity. fourth, it is pretty tricky to be a girl. there are lots of things about being a girl, eye lash curlers, high heels, the dynamic between friends, frienemies and enemies that require very delicate balance. and as it was, we don't really get a lot of formal training in these areas. in fact, we hardly know that it is happening because for the most part, it is a very natural part of our being. that last thing anyway, high heels and eye lash curlers take some getting used to. we girls are very competitive with each other. i think there is some very backwards logic that if we are better than someone else, than we succeed and they fail. and i understand that isn't nice and it shouldn't be the way that i or anyone else should think, but the simple fact of the matter is, sometimes it is. a lot of the time too. to be fair, it works to the contrary as well, where we judge ourselves against someone else's successes, even if they are things we don't want yet. i am particularly guilty in this area. i often look at friends (via facebook, aka the best device for destroy or unjustifiably boosting self-esteem ever) from high school or college who are my peers that are engaged, married, have children. i find myself immediately feeling like i'm behind the game even though i don't want to be married or have children...yet. this being the case, if you didn't already know, being a girl is a lot harder than it might look.
now i know that there are many paths in life that we all stumble down that make up our lives and that is what makes us, as humans relatively interesting. it has been my experience that most women, particularly in my generation and the one or two before me, we are obsessed with doing the best thing, being our best, always having the answers and being able to do everything. this, of course, is an impossible task. and even though i wrote that statement, i am still guilty of wanting to be able to do everything (there is an appeal i can't explain here to being a super hero, robot or vampire. maybe some day i'll explain my thoughts on that topic.) here is a giant problem with all of that. i would say that most women when confronted with a problem they don't have an answer to, they opt for what they think is the correct answer. usually this results in women making choices that don't make them happy but what they think will make other people happy, hoping that they might become happy accordingly. simply put, this plan is a fail. i could probably expand but i feel like you get it. what happens next? experience has also taught me that the people who try this method of happiness are also the kind of people who enjoy reading self-help and self-help like books that make them feel better about their lives or will serve as some kind of guide to help them better their lives. so they read books like "who moved my cheese" and "eat, pray, love" expecting some kind of gps device to make life easier rather than a crypic roadmap that still tells you the same lesson you weren't listening to in the first place.
believe it or not, the whole reason for the post is to talk about eat, pray, love. i saw the movie. *sigh*. it was a very long film and the whole time i found myself thinking, 'this is why the world hates the united states' and 'what happens when she goes back to new york at the end of this?' i find it to be a horribly childish notion that if you run away from your problems, they will go away. this just in, problems don't move on their own. it's a lot of work to get passed them. if you leave, they will be waiting for you when you get back, having grown impatient in your absence, which makes them so much worse to deal with. something to consider. i also have this suspicion that she didn't actually learn anything. my proof? it's like this. she left to go to italy, india and bali to learn how to connect with the world and like find her true self or something right? maybe i took too much away from this but to me i thought she would also be trying to live her life, as my friend shelby would say, as a strong independent woman of the 21st century. read: this does not mean go to these countries and find men who will tell you what to do, how to do it, how to feel and how to live. liz gilbert found herself a male tutor in italy who showed her around and helped her feel at home, she found that guy from texas who flat out told her she was doing the whole praying business wrong and she met that one guy from who played the creep from "no country for old men" in bali. now at least that one i can understand. you really don't fall in love by yourself but still. come on, liz gilbert. let's give these ladies whose lives you are now impacting some hope that they can be strong and stand on their own.
i'm not going to say liz gilbert is without any insight. i liked this quote: "happiness is the consequence of personal effort. you fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. you have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. and once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it." i just believe soundly that that realization could have been made anywhere in the world, not necessarily by travelling the world. the realization that you deserve happiness doesn't need to take place on a beach in bali or at an ashram in india any more than positive changes to one's life need to be vowed on new years day. if you allow the people in your life to play a role in helping you realize what you deserve, it makes it a lot easier to work towards that end.
so i guess the bottom line is this, live this life for yourself because it is the only one that you have. if you want to eat ice cream every day for a week, do it. if you need to see a therapist because you can't figure out why you don't smile, do it. do whatever you have to do to be happy because you deserve it. i'm not saying i have all the answers or that i can even do this but i do know that i can try. that is what counts. just sayin.
from the girl who probably should have never seen eat, pray, love
until next time...
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