The hard and the easy

Have a nice day.  :-)

At any single point in time, there is a lot wrong with the world.   We might be swept away by pervasive problems, like policies that don't take into account the big picture, companies that value profit at all costs, or world hunger.  There is a lot that needs to be improved in our individual lives, too.  It is easy to get bogged down by the difficulty of a marriage that isn't going smoothly, a career that is draining, or children that present daily, repetitive challenges.  Add to that the daily stresses and annoyances of trying to cross items off of our 'To do' lists, manage our finances, and just generally get along with others (who are maybe not always so easy to get along with), and there is a lot to complain about in this mortal life.

The temptation to do just that, to complain, or rant on Facebook, or just generally feel sorry for ourselves, is strong.  Somehow, it seems like it will make us feel better.  To revel in the wrongness, to have people agree, to give an 'Amen!' to our succinct and oh-so-right perspective on just how bad things are, and especially how at fault other people are.  We can walk away feeling smug, secure in our rightness, and thinking, if only more people would wake up and do things the way we know they ought to be done.

I am choosing not to do that here, in this blog.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not saying other people can't do that.  I mean, some people live for it.  Live for the bad news, the next snippet of horribleness from their most hated politician or manager or mother-in-law that they can announce, more evidence proving how awful that person really is.  I know a lot about those people, because it comes very naturally to me to be one of those people.  But being one of those people has never made me happy.

It has, on the other, done a bang up job of making me feel a host of other things.  Entitled.  Superior.  Anxious.  Depressed.

A quote that I came across in Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project really resonated with me:

"It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light." ~G. K. Chesterton

It is hard to look on the bright side.  People can treat you like you must not be very smart, must not understand how wrong things are.  Or they can be nasty and jealous.  There is a sort of social pressure that says, "How dare you talk about your wonderful life when so many people have it worse?  Don't you care about how bad you will make them feel?"  But I think that what really brings people down is hearing about all the hopeless and dreary things.  People are drawn to hope and beauty and happy things.  You don't see a lot of disaster photos being pinned to Pinterest.

The way I see it, any blog is just a collection of thoughts and ideas, memories and musings, expressed in words and illustration.  I want to be mindful about what I will be collecting here.  I want it to be the good stuff.  The things I want to remember, the things I am most proud of, the things that smack of the life I want to cultivate for myself, and my family. 

Good stuff.

There are crummy things and bad days in my life, just like there are in yours.  But they aren't the most deserving of my energy and reflection.  The good things are.  And they will be celebrated.