Just as the closing lines of my favourite poem Deisderata says, “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world”.
3 years ago I would have not have grasped the meaning as my heart just got broken, my job wasn’t keeping me fulfilled, my parents were always on my case, my car was in bad condition, my friends were drifting, my injuries where painful and the list goes on.
3 years later, I know to value and enjoy the relationship with myself before one with another person. I’m on the search to getting a rewarding job I want in the non-profit sector and won’t stop till I am there. I Appreciate my parents and I feel it, don’t say it since I’m totally independent now. I’ve got a working safe car and great friend relationships, living with two guys that are different and unique in their own ways, but together equally a big part of my life now. I get injuries now and then, but I know being fit is a bonus, not a criteria to judge my self worth or potential appeal to the opposite sex on.
So things are better, but with as life is, another set of obstacles appear every time you cross the last. It’s not just because I recently finished the Tough Mudder 20km obstacle course that I state that fact. I know it because as my last few posts detail, things took a turn for the worse when I recently lost my job. Before that, it was dealing with the negative environment and the fact I hated it there to begin with. For the past month and a half, I’ve watched my savings for the trip to USA I was going to take in 1 month, drain away as the rejection letters for jobs I applied for, stacked up.
My happiness was in a questionable state. But rather than thinking excessively on the fact I had just lost my job, I wasn’t going to go on my holiday, I didn’t have a career plan, I didn’t have the money to do social things,etc etc . I just sat under my favourite bridge. I sat in silence, watched the sun set and the day cross to night, leaving the sky in a limbo combination of colours that combined orange, light blue and black. I saw people ride past on their bikes. I saw families and couples in love. Dogs and children running in the grass as if there is no where else they would rather be, and I thought.
I thought about how my friends are in great relationships and I’ve never seen them happier. I thought about the ones who got good news of probation reviews and promotions. I did something that we don’t often do, I only thought about everything and everyone but myself and I thought, Yes, it definitely still is a beautiful world.
All around there is amazing things happening. Or those amazing things might be happening in your life, I so. I can expect you would only expect people to be happy for you. So extend that expectation to yourself and you will find it hard not to smile despite the broken dreams, sham and drudgery you are going through.