"The Truth About Truisms" or "How to live your life--happily."

A recent conversation with a close relative of mine made me try and remember something I had posted about life in the Hullabaloo message board back in 1999. It was about living life and the psychological barriers we put up.

As I had alluded in my previous blog, we often take the obvious things in life for granted. We take them for granted and never give them a second thought--or often even a first. I believe this is why the psychological barriers we put up are often more effective than concrete at preventing us from achieving what we would like to.

Here's an example; you can live life however you want to. Most of us read the sentence, nod our heads in agreement, and file it away as something obviously true that we already knew.

But there's much more to it than that.

We really can live our lives how we want to. We think, "I can't run outside naked ranting and raving!" Well, can you?

Another truism--of course you can. Will you? Probably not. Some psychological barrier prevents most of us from doing it. But if we really wanted to, why should we not?

Many of us spend our lives with many unnecessary incongruities between what we truly want and what we are willing to do. How can we claim to truly want to go for a brisk walk every day when we aren't willing to go outside in the winter? How can we claim to want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer when we don't want to do the schooling that goes with it?

The simple answer? We can't.

When we decide that we want something, let's not stop thinking about it then and there. When we decide that we want something, let's evaluate what it means to want it--everything that goes with it--and then truly decide whether it is what we want or not. If we want to be true to ourselves, and if we want to live the lives we truly want to, we will either decide that we really don't want to go out for walks in the cold (and therefore don't really want to go for walks every day) or we don't really want to dissect cadavers or deal with coughs and colds all day, every day (and therefore don't really want to be doctors).

There really is only one answer to the question, "Do you want to live your life how you want?"
And if you decided that it was too cold to go for a walk today, you really did live your life how you wanted it--warm and lazy.

You didn't really want to get that exercise, did you?


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But wait--it gets better!

We're not all at stages in our lives when we are deciding whether to be doctors or lawyers--or even whether we want to take up daily walks for exercise.

Sometimes we are where we are. And sometimes we're not happy about it. Some of us downright hate our jobs, or our present situations while bemoaning the "fact" that we can't change them.

Well, maybe we aren't willing to make drastic changes because of the ramifications. Let's take an exemplar from the popular television sitcom, Scrubs. One of the characters, the hospital janitor, insecure with his position, often acts out a self-deprecating hyperbole towards JD. He may hate picking up garbage others carelessly leave around. He may dread scrubbing grimy toilets. He may resent JD for being "better than him."

But realize it or not, he is living his life of choice. And if he doesn't want to do what it takes to make his life what it is, he will continue to be a janitor. So if the situation is not going to change, why hate it? Why go through life hating every moment when there are so precious few moments to live? He knows he has to pick up garbage. He can choose to be happy picking up garbage, or he can choose to spend the same time being unhappy. He can choose to celebrate life cleaning grimy toilets, or he can be miserable during that time. He can spend his life resenting others, or he can enjoy what he does have in life.

The truth about truisms is that we truly choose how we feel and what we want in life. It's a hierarchical relationship.

If you want to be a janitor, you must also want everything about being a janitor, from training, through routine duties, to exceptionally messy bed-pan spills. And while you reconcile within, you can choose to live your life happy. Or you can choose to live it miserably. There is no concrete barrier preventing you from being happy cleaning toilets. There are no chains holding you from smiling while sweeping the floors.

So the truth is, if you want to be happy in life. Be happy. When we want to be happy, but find that we're not--that's when we're not being true to ourselves. Realize there's nobody holding a gun to your head and forcing you not to be happy with your life.

And this is your life, dammit! You can be happy whenever--and wherever--you want.