Imagine If We Could Lead A Simple Life
We live in such simple times, yet finding happiness is much more complicated.
How can this be, when looking at our everyday lives, we have literally the entire world at our fingertips. We can search how many centimeters are in a mile, how to spell correctly, how to cook; heck there’s even a WikiHow tutorial on how to kiss.
Yet, we aren’t satisfied.
We throw our phones when they crash. We throw a fit when the internet’s down. We flip off the person carefully driving. We groan when the printer’s too slow. We roll our eyes when there is “nothing to eat,” because apples, milk, and cereal don’t count as food. We swerve through traffic. We don’t hold the door open. We don’t thank those who hold the door open for us. We briskly pass past the men in the red aprons that read “Salvation Army” in white stitch: we’re just trying to get our groceries and get the hell home. We snark hellish things, just to get a good laugh from a crowd of people we don’t care about.
Yet, we continue to ask ourselves, “why me?” We desperately search for the answer to this devastating question by drowning ourselves in everything any podcast, book, or youtuber titles as self-care or self-help. We meditate, journal, list five things we’re grateful for daily, read, find new creative outlets to express ourselves, cut out any toxicity in our lives, drown ourselves in work, drink more water, eat healthier, start working out, take days to ourselves to reset. We start to shut out friends once they’ve wronged us and we declare them “toxic” because our self help book told us that’s the only way to grow. We leave our spouses or girlfriends or boyfriends and friends because a podcast said we “deserve better” which translates into not wanting to communicate because we feel a sense of entitlement. If not, then the reason is that they “no longer serve a purpose.”
Yet, after all this searching, we find ourselves still not happy. We look around us, and we’ve shut out all of our friends, our significant others, and even family. We’re frustrated and confused thinking, “I’m doing everything this book/podcast/youtuber said.”
Imagine if it wasn’t this complicated.
Well, it isn’t. We just have to look. If we focus on the microscopic things, we’ll only set our sights on the negatives. Yet there’s so much to be happy about. We get to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. We get to drink water. We sleep in a bed, under a roof. We’re able to get jobs. We can walk. We can talk. We can communicate. We can see. We can hear. We can drive. You have a phone, tablet, or computer that you can read this article on with internet. Happiness can be found in the simplest things, and it’s when we overlook them that we aren’t happy.