Thursday, February 23, 2012

IT"S ALL INTERESTING

IT"S ALL INTERESTING.  Life doesn't get boring.  Boring is something we do to  ourselves.
It’s all interesting.  Life doesn't get boring.  Boring is something we do to ourselves.  It seems to me that many people wear boredom as if it was a fashion statement.  “Look at me!  I’m so sophisticated, so cool, that I am above being interested by anything.”  The trap is that they begin to believe it themselves and cut themselves off from experiencing life. Sophistication, true sophistication, means you have the capacity to enjoy more things. It means you can enjoy a Shakespeare play or a ballet.  It doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy an action movie or a square dance.

   "The world is so full of such wondrous things
     that we should all be as happy as kings."

That bit of Lewis Carroll means there is always something in our environment to engage us if we only let it.  Never be "too cool" to enjoy something; that's just denying yourself part of what life is offering.  A spider spinning a web or dealing with an insect it has captured is a “wondrous” thing.  So is watching a crew build a house or a bridge.  Your backyard is a nature preserve filled with all sorts of interesting creatures.  Even schoolbooks sometimes have mind catching stuff in them. 



  
NO VACANCY.  “Don't let anyone live rent free in your head.”  This is a phrase often heard in recovery groups.  It’s a one liner way of saying that we only hurt ourselves when we obsess over what someone else is thinking about us or has done to us or failed to do for us.  Holding a grudge or resentment because someone has hurt you only lets them keep on hurting you with no further effort on their part.  After 9/11, the mantra became "Don't let the terrorists win, get life back to normal."  Apply the same reasoning to one-on-one situations.  I like to remind the people I talk with about this that most people spend about as much time thinking about them as they do thinking about other people.  Someone else said, “Holding on to a resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other guy to die.”

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