Self analysis is really quite hard. And kind of fun. You have whole conversations with yourself – question and answer, arguments, debates. Makes you look kind of spacey. It really is a freaky thing when you state something and then turn around and totally disagree with yourself.
I’ve been doing it now for two days over a question recently posed to me by a wise locust: “Why do you think you don’t deserve happiness?”
My first reaction was – that’s not what I think. Second reaction – well maybe it is what I think and I don’t know it. Maybe it’s what my subconscious thinks and it hasn’t yet filled me in.
And so started a long conversation with myself.
Me 1: It’s not that I think I don’t deserve happiness, it’s that I doubt my ability to successfully find it.
Me 2: Why do I think I can’t find it?
Me 1: Because I don’t even know how to answer the question “what makes me happy?” What gets me up in the morning? I strive to think, and come up short. I have no idea. I really have no idea why I bother getting up in the morning. I just know I have to.
Me 2: Well think harder. If I had a reason to get up in the morning, what would it be? Has anything in my life ever made me even slightly more excited to get up in the morning?
Me 1: If I have a good idea in my head and I want to write it down, I’m excited to get up and start playing…
Me 2: Boom. Creating. I like creating things. I like creativity.
Me 1: yeaaah… but I don’t know yet if I can make a life out of that.
Me 2: Back to question one then eh?
Me 1: shuddup.
Me 2: no you shuddup. It sounds like I’m doing the ‘don’t deserve it’ thing again.
Me 1: Noooo… For me, happiness just seems hard to obtain. And I don’t want to fuck it up. It’s like happiness is a butterfly I’m creeping up on and I’ll probably end up scaring it away.
Me 2: Touching imagery. So do I just believe that it’s too much of a yin yang thing? Maybe I can’t have happy without a good dose of the sad?
Me 1: I guess. Probably stems from happy times in my life that have turned to pot. Is this where I get to blame my childhood?
Me 2: If I want. But I thought I’d squared away the whole ‘father figure’ fiasco.
Me 1: Unless I haven’t, and there’s issues of abandonment still going on? I did have an 11 year relationship straight out of high school with someone 7 years older than me (so that’s kind of father figurey), and that got totally screwed over. Kind of gave me little hope of ever finding a good male figure to share my life with.
Me 2: Yeeesss… let’s blame the ex.
Me 1: Seems too easy. Got to be more to it than that. Do I feel like whenever there is happiness in my life, it ends up abandoning me?
Me 2: I don’t know. You’re asking me?
Me 1: It’s like I’m waiting for happiness to be handed to me. Like I don’t want to put in the effort to go out and find it. I’m inactive instead of proactive. Is it a sense of abandonment? Do I believe that happiness, even if found, will inevitable abandon me?
Me 2: Or is that because I feel I’m not worthy of it? Or am I just lazy? Is my happiness having a sleep-in, head under the covers, refusing to get up until I poke it enough?
Me 1: Yeah I like that – My happiness is covered. Isn’t it strange we ‘search’ for happiness as though it is somewhere outside of us? Reality is, happiness is within and we just have to work out how to recover it – or, uncover it.
Me 2: – and be happy in any situation. How do the ascetics do it?
Me 1: Sigh. I know not.
Me 2: Yes I do, I know I do. In Buddhism and Hinduism they talk of the ‘divinity within’ – the idea that we’re all divine, we just have many veils covering it. We already know everything. We just have to remember that we know it, by slowly lifting the veils. We walk around in a fog unaware of what we are, believing everything and everyone is somehow different to us, when the truth is we’re all from the same divine spark – we are all divine.
Me 1: Dude, deep. So happiness is within.
Me 2: I still haven’t answered the question.
Me 1: Well, you get that. How about, I do think I deserve happiness, I even know how to obtain happiness, I just don’t put what I know and believe into practice.
Me 2: – and so I need a good kick up the arse.
Me 1: Don’t get cocky.
Me 2: Do you know what I’ve forgotten?
Me 1: What?
Me 2: This quote I once fell in love with:
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
- Goethe (possibly)
Me 1: True that.
Probably goes without saying I’m a work in progress…
3 comments:
You've made some good progress, but yes still work to be done.
An important part of the question can also be expressed as: "Why is it that you NEED a kick in the arse? Why are you not already motivated to reach out, or reach within, to find it?"
because i don't back myself enough. i don't think i've got what it takes to find it, to be perfectly honest. which is a total crock of poo because i know i do (have what it takes), so i just have no idea where the block is...
i'm a fraidy cat. perhaps that's my introversion. in every other way i'm pretty extroverted, but this to me feels very introverted. i don't want to bother the world with my quest for the holy grail of happiness, in case it's an inconvenience. or something. what? i think i should go to bed.
Goethe was so wise.
Just do it Mel. I know it's not much coming from me but do it.
For the record, I think we could make a great creative team. We seem to be in tune. :P
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