Always Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop?
It never seems to fail, after several hours or even days of life rolling along smoothly, happily even, out of nowhere, the clouds return.
Why does my life constantly have this way of rolling…good, then bad, then good…it makes it impossible to even enjoy the good at all!
I hear these words often from those around me as they face disappointment and exasperation and it usually silences me . Truthfully, there is little that silences me, but this one does. I suppose because I can relate and have spent much time perseverating that very topic without answers.
Yet today, that question simply does not come up. Here is the part where my friends that know me are rolling their eyes at yet another thing that appears easy in my life…but don’t shut me out yet. It has nothing to do with having an easy life. Nothing at all. In fact, I could spend the next 8 hours writing about all of the exasperation I have had in just the last 5 years of my life.. But I won’t, because quite honestly, reliving the hard parts is what keeps them alive.
It’s like I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Always waiting for the other shoe to drop…
In other words, you’re waiting for this luck to run out. Instead of enjoying this moment in time, you are trying to see around the next corner. Am I right?
I get it! I really do. I have also noticed that when I am more concerned with what’s next, I am rarely present. Instead I fixate on how to stop time, or whatever might be next. I mean, doesn’t a more predictable life without surprises seem kind of dreamy?
Yet even knowing what’s next, is not a guarantee of happily every after. Forever.
I just want to enjoy feeling happy for a sustained period of time. Is that even possible?
The answer is YES! In fact, you can be happy for more than a while. You can be happy for as long or as little as you would like. Yep, I said. Even though you do not feel like happiness is a choice,. I am not saying that every day can be a perfectly happy day, but I will say you could be more intentional in choosing it.
To be, or not to be. That is the question.
I don’t think that is the question at all. How about instead…to be. Period.
Listen, we all have stuff. It is what life is made of. In fact, the stuff, all of it, is what makes up this life. Some parts of this life are rough, unbearable, hideous, absolutely too much to take. I know. Not only because of what I have experienced in my life, but also because of what I have seen others experience as well. The hard stuff is very real.
Yet when you can learn to truly be present in your life, when you can feel the floor under your feet, inhale deeply aware of the scents around you, exhale smoothly, there are no thoughts about shoe dropping or life…tomorrow. After all, you are too busy living in this present moment. Often the root of happiness is not only in being joyful, but in simply experiencing this present moment. And knowing that it too shall pass.
Life is not good or bad, it’s the thinking that makes it so.
Let’s pretend for a moment that you believe this to be true. If life is only what you call it, and you are frantically looking for signs for the good or bad that is coming next, it will always feel bumpy and uncomfortable. Even when things are going along smoothly. Yet what if we could stop defining each moment as good or bad, and instead referred to each moment as life. Would that feel different? Would you then have an opportunity to think about it differently?
Actually if the less joyful life moments were simply given less attention, you could in fact feel sustained happiness.
Your 17-year-old totaling the family car. Life. An incessant 4-year-olds’ tantrums. Life. Spouses infidelity. Life. Job loss. Life.
You could add any topics that you normally label bad and rename it life. It’s way more than a name game. It’s the ultimate in acceptance and it changes the way your brain thinks. We could even go a step further and replace bad, with good if we embrace some famous quotes:
After darkness, comes light. Hardships are the pathway to peace. Of bad things, good things come…
What if all of those things you have been labeling as bad, even though hard or intolerable, just had to happen to get to what is next, which might be good. I am aware this does not always occur. Like my 72-year-old mother getting pancreatic cancer, for instance. But even with that, I had choices about what I needed or wanted to do next. And one of them was not to wallow in my depressed state of mind and get under the covers. Instead, I called it life and declared I would do whatever I needed to make the most of the time I had left with my mother, not knowing how much or little time she had. I did not anticipate each day as another bad day, but instead celebrated every next day I had with her.
If you truly want to get off this rollercoaster ride we call life, constantly good and bad and even more bad, stop calling it that.
This is life. This is not a dress rehearsal. The good, the bad…it’s all temporary. So why name call it at all?
Instead, give extra attention to the parts of your day that make your heart feel happy, and less energy to things that don’t. What you will no doubt find is that when you stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, it often doesn’t. And sometimes, even when it does, you don’t even notice, because you are too busy admiring the shoes you already have on!