Will I ever Be Happy? Life: A Ninja Around The Bend

     Nope...never! You will always be miserable and lonely and bitter. That's what life is all about you know, suffering. Suffering is all there is. Not!  Of course you can be happy. Sometimes the trick to finding answers is to realize that you are asking the wrong questions. How about this one: What can I do to make myself happy? Now that's one worth pondering. If you take life in like it's an enemy force of ninjas with the soul purpose of "getting" you then chances are you are going to feel shitty a lot of the time. It's hard to look ahead and smile when you're constantly waiting for calamity to rear it's head. Worry is the enemy of happiness. Waiting for the bottom to fall out is so time consuming and energy draining.

    Some people find it easier to look for the bad in things. They like to dress it up in fancy ball gowns and make it look nice by calling it stuff like "being prepared" or "weighing the consequences." But the joke's on them. There are always bad things to be found so congratulations on your successful endeavor. It doesn't take a super genius to see that there are bad things everywhere. Things to be sad and angry about are plentiful, and there isn't a shortage coming. What people fail to recognize is that the bad things are gonna be there whether you're "prepared" or not. Your constant, self destructive paranoia of the bad things doesn't protect you against them it just consumes your time and thoughts.

    Sure taking the blissful road and focusing on the good stuff out there has consequences. You might be riding your bike in the sunshine through a meadow of good thoughts, looking ahead at the awesome grandure of your possibilities and hit a pot hole. You may be flung off of your bike and break your arm as your body slams into a huge boulder that you hadn't noticed before ( because you were looking forward and not to the side or behind you searching for potential doom.) What rocks though is that when the bad thing (read pothole that knocks you on your ass) comes as a surprise you are more likely to handle it well. Your mind is brimming with positivity so it is harder to sink you in a pit of depression and uselessness. Positivity keeps you afloat, it makes you a problem solver. Instead of sitting on the ground crying about your injury and asking yourself, "Why does this always happen to me?" You stand yourself up, get back on the bike and pedal your ass to a hospital, one handed so you can get a cast on that wound and move on with your day. If you are so busy boo hooing your way through life and expecting the worst then when the worst shows up you'll probably just drown in it. But I hear that a good attitude makes for a really useful life raft....just saying.

Emotional Habit

There are many positive ways to change your life but in order to guarantee that the change is permanent you have to take an honest and sometimes brutal inventory of your negative emotional habits and the choice patterns that have led you to were you are. And second you must make a conscious decision to create healthier reactions in yourself. Remove judgement (of yourself and others), quell the need for outside approval, and take back ownership of your life. Once you've done this, the people around you will no longer stake a claim in your stress, your happiness, or your decision making. Their woes and triumphs will be theirs and yours will be yours. This does not mean that you should stop caring about others. It simply means to stop being consumed by what you can not control. The first step to ownership of your life is accepting that it is yours and only yours. That is freedom. That is where you find content.

Open Arms

Through all the turmoil of all my days
I forward go to a better place
For though I've lost some of these fights
I've never failed in my whole life
For every step not placed with care
Every moment of despair
Every second spent in dark
Every tear bled by my heart
All of it has led me here
To be this person without fear

It's taken time to understand

The wondrous ways fate moves it hand

The way it knows to knock us down,

To leave us longing to be found
For when it feels like we are done,

As though the battle can't be won

There floats a bit of hoping in

So we may feel the urge to win

And stand ourselves up in the storm

And fight for air, and peace, and warmth

For as we are we are enough

We're built to learn and give and love
And even on the coldest nights
When sadness robs light from our sight
We can recall our grand design
And find the will to push and try
To fumble foolish with our hearts
And welcome life with open arms...