Life sometimes feels like you're riding in an old bus, careening down a steep twisting mountain road in torrential rain, with the bus driver either drunk or high — or both — and you find yourself having thoughts about whether the whole world is just going to fall off a cliff.
And sometimes that actually feels like the preferable outcome!
Of course, quite a few of these feelings arise because we have a deep attachment to the outcome of the situation. We had an idea — or a dream — that life was going to turn out a specific way for us... and that's just not happening!
And that seems to be one of the things that troubles so many people in the world today: they don't get to have things the way they want and it practically results in an international incident!
I suppose we could have a long convoluted — and undoubtedly heated —discussion about whether or not life is harder today than it used to be, but I'm more interested in looking at the other possibility... which is that we have grown less capable of facing and dealing with adversity, matched with the fact that perhaps we also have higher expectations or even a sense of entitlement to things turning out our way.
Can't say as how I really blame anyone, since we are eternally surrounded by messages about what "success" looks like, and messages about how we "deserve to have it all."
Now I'll be the first to admit that I often catch myself getting annoyed at challenging moments that are actually just a part of normal life, and I have to check myself and recognize that some of these feelings are largely irrational... or not based on what I could reasonably expect.
Let's face it, being born into this world was not accompanied by a guidebook that said we were entitled to have it easy! And blaming potentially overindulgent parents doesn't really alter reality!
Lately, I have increasingly been gradually learning to embrace how to simply not give a pluck about most things. It's not an approach that necessarily comes naturally to most of us... it's something that we have to learn.
In the simplest — and very local — sense of the idea, just take a place like our own Hive community. Objectively speaking, our participation here is entirely voluntary, and we're not entitled to anybody liking our posts, nor are we entitled to get any specific minimum amount of rewards. Hive is not our employer and we didn't sign some contract promising us a return on investment. We're also not entitled to the price of Hive going up all the time or, for that matter, going anywhere, all the time, or some of the time, or none of the time.
And so, when I sink into a state of really not giving a pluck, I'm just grateful that I have a place to occasionally express myself and share whatever silly musings are going through my head. Whether they're actually worth something is a completely arbitrary thing I have no particular attachment to. That's not to say that I don't hope to be rewarded but let's keep in mind that hope is a very different thing from expectation.
Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!
As always, a 10% 