I wake up in the morning. I have a long list of shit that has to get done. That, and an even longer list of things to think about. I take a shower and hit the road. But there is peace in my life. I am not talking about the peace that comes from religion, or the peace that comes from not knowing just how bad things can get. I am talking about the peace that comes with the resignation that life is just that, life.
I have been amazingly fortunate as things go. I had a good family that cared about me a great deal. Not that my childhood was all bicycles and ice cream cones, just that they were there if I needed them. They bailed me out on more than one occasion. There are people who are not so lucky. There are people whose parents treat them like shit and take out all of their crap on them. I talked to one of those people tonight.
But it is not them who I have to thank the most for opening my eyes. It is myself. I chose to be. At any point during any of this I could have chosen not to. Even right now, I can choose to stop. I don't. I don't because I love all this stuff too much. There are too many people to talk to and too many things to see. Coffee is good. I like coffee. My advice, do something or get out. Stop bitching. Stop wasting the air that the trees see so fit to provide. Better life through the entropy of others.
What this has led me to realize is that there is a breakpoint in your evolution as an individual, a point where you make your decision. Are you going to continue to let life treat you like a pawn (which in fact you are in some sense), or are you going to realize yourself into better things. It really all comes down to a frame of reference. If you think that you are never happy because you believe happiness to be something greater than it actually is, then you will never see it. Standing in the midst of life you can sometimes miss that which is right before you.
So every day I stop and rest my mind. I let my position inside match up with my position outside. I can effect very little change in the world around me. I can effect large amounts of change in the way that I look at things. Happiness is not a state of mind, for that entails the wrong idea that a mind is something that can exist in multiple states. Happiness is an observation that life is what it is, something to be lived. Less obtusely, life exists without your observation of it and if you take the time to stop trying to be something, you will discover what you are.
So onward depressed and downtrodden individuals! I hope that some day you open your eyes, stop blaming life for you messed up state, and realize that you make the decision to be what you are. Just stay out of my way, I have as much living to do as time sees fit to grant me.