I’ve been looking for a job since the beginning of April. I’m a freelance writer, and while 2008 and 2009 went well enough, the recession caught up with my clients and me at the turn of the year, and since that time, work has been spotty at best.I just got a promising freelance project this week, but I continue to look for full-time work. There’s only so much money left in my family’s savings to pay the bills.
It doesn’t faze me. I’m doing fine, one day at a time, because I’ve figured out the secret to human happiness.
It’s all in our heads.
I guess you’ve heard this before. But when was the last time you actually managed to go into your brain and put it into practice? Self-improvers tend to wade inside themselves with a potato masher, bent on personally squishing all the bad stuff out of their grey matter and forcing the remains through a sieve to filter out the nuggets of serenity, joy, and peace that might be hidden there.
Such was my approach for a good 40 years. I thrashed around my insides with blunt instruments, determined to beat my misery into submission. The whole spastic effort just left me gummed up in a ball of misery.
Generally, this will be the result, no matter what your misery of choice. You might be a habitual self-kicker, or a bigot, or a punitive martinet, or a workaholic, or self-absorbed, or a lazy good-for-nothing, or an angry, violent, lying, son of a bitch. You may hate your misery with a purple passion, but be unable to overcome it no matter how you struggle and strive. People become so wrapped up in their hatred of the problem that it becomes impossible do deal with the problem itself.
I only began to make progress against my self-hatred when I figured out the effective limits of my jurisdiction. Some parts of the universe—specifically including those areas where decisions are made on my worth to humankind, the value of my contribution to the greater good, my moral batting average, my ultimate eternal destination, the sorting out of my pluses versus my minuses, the final judgment of my goodness or badness—all that stuff is simply outside my bailiwick.
What I control are my actions in this moment. I can make the next step down the walkway and see what happens. If it gets me toward my destination, I try another. If it causes pain to me or others, I stop and reevaluate. If the pain might result in a better outcome, I might keep moving in that direction, with all due caution.
At the end of the day I can check where I am, and who I am, and if I’ve lost ground or caused pain I can change direction and make amends the next day.
What I cannot do ever is assume that I’m in charge of the final judgment on myself. The small, moment-by-moment calls are up to me. The big ones I let go to someone else. And that leaves me at peace.
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