Curtain Call

It is that time of the year when there is festivity, holiday spirit roaming, and bright nights created by artificial lights, the bursting urge to create pleasant memories, be with family, dwell in the warm embrace of love and unwind from the trauma of the year but in the typical human fashion there is a nagging voice prompting you to reach out, to still take hold of the unattained and this causes one to be plagued with the need to plan, strategize so pleasure with a tinge pain, fondling bitter-sweet memories to be happy or not to be.

The little reminder that life continues even amidst the merriment, that one’s problem still lingers even if they are held abbey briefly on some sort of time out so one can get the good memories in. This is where I find myself though with a tad less fanfare.

In my retreat, I find myself asking: In what ways will you choose happiness? How can you change your life?

Yes, I wake up to ponder on things like this. Why? I have no idea. I am equally as befuddled as you are reading this. Have you ever wondered about how interesting life is? The multiple stories existing in the universe with several pathways forged by our uniqueness? Yet, we face common problems and can feel for one another. The several doors that lead to the happiness we chase, the many worlds we are not privy to despite taking up so much space living. How we all have our circle of influence no matter how we try to conquer the world, how invariably we all come from and maintain a niche. How we are bound by our experiences…

Well, this is what I think about first when I consider questions of this nature, how do I change my life? or is it better to say how does one change one’s life? I really do wish this post was a DIY on how to have an amazing life but in the practical sense where there is a step-by-step guide, one can practice achieving immediate results. In some ways it is but there is no easy answer because even this writer is figuring it out.

I start by understanding my limitations. In considering this I examine my strengths from the perspective of my personal flaws and more congenially, from the perspective of my humanity. In the sense that there are some common problems, humans must face or collective obstacles. It is like we exist to solve problems but largely, I remind myself that I cannot be everything or a part of everything, or win in every sphere despite my brilliance, zeal, ambition, and desires but surely, I can choose my wins.

The next hurdle then is determining what my challenges are and how to solve them. Now most of us can determine the first, it is with the latter we are quite handicapped. We are brilliant enough to know what plagues us but our brilliance is almost inadequate to set us free despite the saying that “a problem known is a problem half solved.” Yeah, except we don’t like the half we are stuck with. We want it all or at least the other half also.

This brings me to the next dilemma, the issue of identity. Most individual problems are tied to our desires ambitions, and thought patterns, to the path we elect to travel but even when we voluntarily chose the path, we consider quitting time and time again because we often doubt whether we would love the person we are travailing to meet on the other side and even in certainty, we still doubt.

The crisis is also that the identity we aspire to may also change with new perspectives and experiences so it is almost akin to having to start the journey to our aspirational self each time there is a paradigm shift despite being comfortable in the path trapezed prior.

Is this a common problem or is it just peculiar to me?

Hence, because we doubt our identity, we try to imitate the people in our environment we start to compare ourselves with others in hopes that we will find inspiration but in doing so we inadvertently, dredge up insecurities because we are at odds with the person we are trying to imitate like an imposter and then when we wake up to ourselves again, it is to repeat the process of self-discovery.

This is the crux of the struggle we spend so much time finding ourselves because it is important to be ourselves but we are not one type of self, we are a summation of a collective self. The search for self seems elusive as though we are chasing images in a kaleidoscope running from us. I think this is what makes life interesting. Some of us attain mastery in this chase.

Yet, while we go through the evolution of this mastery, we must learn to celebrate the wins, the attained, while we hunt the unattained. It starts with the simple things, writing down the impossible things we have achieved and the ones we aspire to because there is a reward in the journey as well as the destination. It is a reminder that even as we search for our aspirational self we can celebrate our present self. It is in listening to the hum of our souls and in our willingness to pay the price for our bliss.

In the end, happiness is personal but it can be shared. If we do not take the steps personally to take a hold of it, we never get to the phase of sharing. It is our internal turmoil that makes our external victories obvious to us if not others until we share the story behind the newly arrived destination.

The battle of the mind is ever present with all of us we just get better at wielding the weapon of tranquility and balance, we learn to dance with the waves, to cry and be ecstatic, to live or to die trying. We remember that we are central to our problems, they follow us because we generate them just as we live but we are not our hurdles, we merely participate in them.

As you unwind and retreat, it is okay to say you are doing well and merry to your heart’s content.

Live now.

The battle continues…

See you soldier.