Happiness is a Journey

In the course of this life, I have struggled with getting to know my essential self. It’s a part of the struggle of being a sentient being with a moral compass, to struggle to find your way all while dealing with feelings of desire, greed, jealousy, love, anger, egotism…the list goes endlessly onward. I didn’t understand the importance of getting to know myself until after my marriage failed. I suppose you could say it was the spark that ignited my pursuit of finding my core. I was tired of feeling angry and having my feelings be whipped around at the whim of someone else’s. I am a 21st century female, capable of voting, acquiring gainful employment and still rockin’ it out in the kictchen (my choice!), so why was I still letting my partner influence so much of who I was and how I felt? I’ll share what I’ve discovered in the next few paragraphs, with the hope that it will provide you with some clarity, or maybe kick-start your own journey into being happy to settle in with your own thoughts and find the love you’ve been looking for waiting patiently for you to take notice.

Exactly what is Love? I’ve come to discover that love is the sincere wish for others to be happy, and to be free from suffering. Love is realistically recognizing others' kindness as well as their faults. Love is being aware of another person’s feelings but not being swept away by them. There are no ulterior motives to full-fill our own wants or desires, there is no pull to make someone just a little “better”, we love simply because that person exists, exactly as they are. Attachment is a close cousin of love and often exaggerates others' good qualities and makes us crave to be with them. When we're with them, we're happy, but when we're separated from them we find ourselves un-happy and tempermental. Attachment is linked with expectations of what others should be or do. Is love, as we have come to understand it in our culture, really love or a form of attachment…or in some cases a form of addiction to sexual gratification and the good feelings associated with being in an intimate, physical relationship?

Generally we are attracted to people either because they have qualities we value or because they make us feel good/wanted. If we observe our own thought processes mindfully, and carefully - we'll notice that we look for specific qualities in others.

Some of these qualities we find attractive, others are values that we have inherited from the society we live in or from our familial circles. Someone who has grown up in a family with little financial stability will often have the emphasis placed on finding a partner who has the ability to provide that stability. American society has created this attraction to others who are tall, lithe, bronzed Gods and Godesses’…

We examine someone's looks, body, education, spiritualism, hygiene, employment, and social status. This is how most of us decide on whether or not the person holds any true value to us. Subconsciously, we think “Will this person make me better.” In addition, we judge people as worthwhile according to how they relate to us. If they help us, praise us, make us feel secure, listen to what we have to say, care for us when we are sick or depressed, we consider them good people, and it is this type of people we are most likely to be more attracted to. But this is very biased, for we judge them only in terms of how they relate to "us", placing ourselves at the center of all existence, as if we are truly the most important person in the world. How does this person treat the people around you? How do they treat strangers? How do they act in traffic? Around children? We overlook that people are capable of being one way in the presence of one group and another elsewhere.

After we've judged certain people to be good for us, whenever we see them it appears to us as if goodness is coming from them. We expect to have that feeling of “goodness” radiate into us because we are with them, but if we are more aware, we recognize that we have projected this goodness onto them. How many times have you fallen in love with the expectation you have for a person rather than the person themselves?

The desire to be with people who make us feel good causes us to become dependent on getting that feeling from them. Your feelings cease to be your own and your emotions and reactions to life are linked directly to the source of your good feelings. Furthermore, we form fixed concepts of what our relationships with those people will be and thus have expectations of them. When they do not live up to our expectations of them, we're very disappointed, or may become angry! How dare they challenge the idea we have created for them!? Don’t they don’t they are responsible for not one person, but two? We want them to change so that they will they will match what we think they are. But our projections and expectations come from our own minds, not from our partner.

Our problems arise not because others aren't who we thought they were, but because we mistakenly thought they were something they aren't. What we call love is most often attachment.

We then cling to tightly to that person, thinking our happiness depends on that person.

Love, on the other hand, is an open and very calm, relaxed attitude. We want someone to be happy, and free from suffering simply because they exist. While attachment is uncontrolled and much too sentimental, Love is direct and powerful. Attachment obscures our judgment and we become impatient, angry, and impartial, helping only our dear ones and harming those who we don't like. Love builds up others, and clarifies our minds, and we access a situation by thinking of the greatest good for everyone. Attachment is based on selfishness, while Love is founded upon cherishing others, even those who do not look very appealing to the eyes. Love looks beyond all the superficial appearances, and dwells on the fact that they are just like us: they want inner peace, happiness, and want to avoid suffering. If we see unattractive, dirty, ignorant people, we feel repulsed because our selfish minds want to know attractive, intellectual, clean, and talented people. Love, on the other hand, never evaluates others by these superficial standards and looks much deeper into the person. Love recognizes that regardless of the others' appearances, their experience is the same as ours: they seek inner peace, to be happy, to be free from sufferings, and to do their best to avoid problems.

When we're attached, we're not mentally and emotionally free. We overly depend on and cling to another person to fulfill our mental and especially our emotional needs. We fear losing the person, feeling we'd be incomplete without him.

This does not mean that we should suppress our emotional needs or become aloof, alone and totally independent, because that too does not solve the problem. We must simply realize our unrealistic needs, and slowly seek to eliminate them. Some emotional needs may be so strong that they can't be dissolved immediately. If we try to suppress them or pretend they do not exist, we become anxious, insecure, falling into a depression. In this case, we can do our best to fulfill our needs while simultaneously working gradually to subdue them.

The core problem is we seek to be loved, rather than to love. We yearn to be understood by others rather than to understand them. If a person can learn to subdue their own attachments, we can most definitely have successful friendships and personal relationships with others. These relationships will be richer because of the freedom and respect - the relationships will be based on. We'll care about the happiness and the misery of all human beings equally, simply because everyone is the same in wanting and needing inner peace, happiness, and not wanting to suffer. However, our lifestyles and interests may be more compatible with those of some people more so than with others and that is alright. In any case, our relationships will be based on mutual Love, mutual interests, and the wish to help each other in life.

Neverland Ain't What It's Cracked Up To Be

I was thinking earlier today about Peter Pan. I've been dealing with a particularly stressful situation in which someone I am close to, that is my age, absolutely refuses to be responsible and it's directly affecting me. Actually, looking back, it's been "affecting" me for years and I'm just now realizing it. That kind of thinking, in my Disney re-wired brain, conjured up the memory of the illustrious figure who literally fights growing up. Is there a lonelier figure than that of Peter Pan, the boy child trapped by his own selfish desire to avoid responsibility and growth? Even when I was younger, I remember feeling sad for Peter who was so scared of change that he created a reality that didn't allow it. He stole away others to join him, but because of his inability to accept change, he never fully accepted them. Peter Pan was utterly depressing in my 8 year old mind (I was emo before it existed, y'all!)

So, of course, dealing with a "Peter Pan" of my very own, has been trying to put it lightly. I have always accepted change and growth...maybe not with the utmost grace initially, but I learn and prosper. It has tempered me into what I believe is a resilient and well rounded individual. The past year has moved me into a level of "grown up" that only loss can bring about. I lost my proverbial "safety net" when my Pops passed on. He had always been my protector and "righter of wrongs." If I needed anything, he was there, ready to take care of it. The last year has really emphasized just how intricately he had been wound into my identity. It isn't so much that I needed someone to catch me often, but it was the knowledge that someone would and could that kept me strong and seemingly invincible.

I am naturally a nurturing person, but I can see now that there are certain types of people who become enabled when in my presence. Essentially, it becomes an un-healthy symbiotic relationship. I feed out sympathy and kindness and instead of using it as fuel to get up, they wallow in it and never move forward. Why should they, I'll take care of everything! Who wouldn't stick around for a gig like that? We learn from our parents how it is we should interact with the world around us. I'm lucky that I had two guides who could exist together while maintaining their own identities. Parents who encouraged me to wander out and find my own way, but let me know the door was open to visit whenever my feet got tired. Parents that let me fall so that I understood that my actions had consequences. I realize that I have failed the Peter Pan in my life by not allowing them to fall, setting un-realistic expectations. I enabled a crippling behavior that stunted their emotional growth and it hurts to accept that. I had always thought I was a great friend, but looking back I can see the wrongs I have aided in. I'm finding my way and growing into a person I want to be each day. Maybe someday, after some time has passed, my Peter will have learned to fly outside of Neverland and we'll find a way to mend fences. For now, I will accept my blame, and bow out before I sacrifice one more minute of my peace of mind.

Hurricane Soul and Tsunami Thoughts

“Sometimes what we call love is just a settling of old scores, or a seeking of forbidden pain, or a circuitous path to the kingdom of cruelty, or she may simply have confused lack of capital with heroism while searching for rescue without knowing from what.”- Anne Roiphe


It's Saturday and I'm posting! I've been online quite a bit in the last few days thanks to the previously mentioned back injury Whats on ye olde mind tap? Besides wishing I could trade in my current back for one less riddled with pain, just that far too many of my friends are deeply unhappy with the romantic aspects of their lives. Those friends that I have that are single are either celibate completely and refusing to date or dating assholes whose self absorbed antics traumatize everyone involved.
Attraction. It's a necessity when your looking for someone to share your time with. When I was younger, like others my age, I was attracted by things that simply pleased my eyes. It didn't take long for me to realize that although my eyes might be pleased by the physical features my heart was often left empty and without love. This was when I discovered lust. Deciphering the two can be a trick since as humans we're instinctive and more often than most will admit, primal. There were two sides to this relationship thing. Interesting.
When I was seventeen I met the man I am now married to, Dan. He was the first person I had met that not only did I find physcially stimulating, but intellectually and emotionally as well. I was overcome with this feeling of "togetherness", and felt for the first time that the world truly is a small place if in all of it, I could find someone who "fit" (please supress giggles your juveniles!) me so well. Of course life happened and we took separate paths for quite sometime (about 4 years), often merging briefly during his military leave, but keeping our distance until the military part of his life was behind him. I did a whole lotta' lustin' in that time and discovered that it's really not the sort of lifestyle that makes me happy. This was when I discovered that I was, indeed, a relationship person. When The Hubs came to me after our separation I was surprised. It had been over a year since we had talked. I had just ended a really terrible relationship with a Cajun douche bag and was back to my "primal ways". I was living with the besties at the time in a townhouse that doubled as "Party City" during the brief year we lived there. I'm veering off subject again. When nostalgia takes over, my blogging seems to become quite sporadic. I had always thought about Daniel, but didn't see how we could be "us" again after all the curve balls life had thrown at us. He just showed up at my doorstep during one "girls night" and said "I'm out of the military for good now (after serving 8 long years in the U.S. Navy) I think it's time we were us again." Very Jerry McGuire. And we were.

Over the course of the past 28 years I have met a multitude of people: roommates/dorm mates, co-workers, people you party with, people you pray with, people you shop with, people that I hold close still and people that I'm happy are gone from my life. In those years, I have gained a thorough understanding of what it is that I find attractive in other people. Through the process of trial and error, all of us find what characteristics in other people that we find exciting, soothing, annoying, irresistible, intriguing...etc. Based on that knowledge we connect with those people that believe will add value to our time.
This is where I get frustrated. This is where I shout to the heavens and say "whyyyyyyyyyy is this STILL a problem!?"

Why is it, that people MY age, are so utterly hell bent on CONSISTENTLY choosing people who they a.) Share no common interests with besides the obvious need for food/water/shelter b.) People who closely resembles those who have gone before and not worked out. I'm all for giving everyone " a chance" and not making decisions based on the views of others, but you can't deny the truth in the old saying "where there's smoke there's fire".

I'm not singling anyone out here. I know of a couple of people that are probably thinking "that bitch, I just KNOW she's talking about me", but in truth this is just a very general assessment. The fact that I can think of at least 6 people that this applies to in my social circle, speaks volumes.

As a society, is there SUCH a stigma on being alone that we would compromise ourselves just to be a part of a couple? I know I'm not single and in truth, I haven't been single for an extended amount of time since I was 17 years old, but those times that I was I never felt like I just HAD to be with someone even if I knew that person was bad for me. I've made BAD decisions, but it was never because I was simply scared of being alone.

BE HAPPY! That is the best advice I could give to any of my friends who find themselves ready to reprimand me for this blog because they just KNOW it's about them. Maybe in the movies being a sad sack is considered sexy but in the real world, where we all have problems on our own, it's very rare that a person is going to be drawn to you if your continuously sulking. I'm not saying fake it. Seriously go out and do the things that you enjoy and pretty soon, you'll be happy, with or without someone to hold your hand while you do it.

STOP WAITING! Live your damned life already. Time will not go backwards if when your 50 you realize "hey I should gone on and *insert wish here* instead of holding off until Mr. or Mrs. Right could join.

BE YOURSELF! Even in the beginning. Gals, don't try and pretend like you don't need food even when your out for dinner, and guys if you curse like a sailor, let it be known up front. The purpose of that date is to decide if the person your out with is compatible with YOU not the person you think they would be interested in. The only smart thing I've ever heard Dr. Phil (who I'm quite sure is the Antichrist with a Georgia accent) say is that the reason most marriages are failing these days is because we create these alter ego's in the beginning of relationships that over time become too much to maintain because they are just facades. As you grow comfortable with someone, all those little things that you lied about add up. If you don't like Chinese food, just say "Hey, I think it's gross" instead of picking at your spring rolls and smiling like a cheshire cat because you think it will make you more attractive in the eyes of a potential life partner. It's gonna' look mighty weird down the road, should things work out with that person, if one day you snap and say "I fucking hate Chinese food, can't we just eat something else". NO ONE likes being lied to, even if it's something seemingly insignificant like that. It creates doubt, doubt creates distrust, which leads to fighting, clinginess and just a breakdown of the structure of the relationship.


If your with someone just too keep from "ending up alone", well, I'm of the opinion that you have no right to bitch about how unhappy you are (unless you've been ball gagged and stuck in someone's closet, gotta' have a disclaimer). It's so cliche, but the truth is life is short and the one we're living at this moment will never be repeated, so make it count! Sure, in any relationship your going to have days when you'd rather chew your own leg off than talk one more time about bills, family gatherings, crazy kids (including those of the four legged variety) etc, but at the end of the day you KNOW the only way to make things better is to curl up next to that person and sleep until a better day rolls along a few hours down the line.

Stick to your guns about those "standards" that you have that pertain to motivation and passion, but be a little more flexible when it comes to physical appearance (not EVERYONE can be Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt) or monetary value. Those are precarious things, like building a home on a sand dune. Over time those things can change. I absolutely agree that you have to be attracted to a person sexually if you plan a future with them, but that doesn't always come from eye candy. Sometimes people become attractive because of those things they do to make us feel our best. If someone can make you smile after you've had the day from hell, that's a start. If someone can turn you on simply by looking at you a certain way, that's a damn good start.

I've had a lot on my mind obviously.
I derive happiness by witnessing the happiness of the people I care about (being an empath sometimes sucks balls). Embrace this life, Debbie and Donnie Downers and take it for everything it's worth. Love yourself and when that happens everything else will fall into place. Remember, confidence is the sexiest thing you can wear.