Ooo sunday photo shoots are fun. I live with some pretty fantastic humans. and our fake cat.
Life's looked a little different this semester. I got a new job at a treatment center, so I spend a lot of mornings alone doing homework or at the anatomy lab, head to work and get home after most people have gone to bed. The new job also means no rugby, which has been hard but it has seemed to be one of those things where you do everything you can to make it work but it just won't. Occasionally the universe asks us to do things a little differently than we intended. And that is okay. Each day is a reassurance that I am where I need to be.
Between conversations with some of the girls at work and friends I've thought a lot about how happiness seems to be this ideal that we teach kids is the default position that we have to be. I reject this sentiment. I don't mind people being happy. Rather it's the idea that everything we do is in the pursuit of happiness. It has led to a contemporary western society that fears sadness. A society that fears emotion, rejects rawness, and praises euphoria.
Wholeness is what we should be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, and failure. All of those things that make us who we are. Happiness, fulfillment, and victory are nice things that happen to us, but they don't teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain, and then they say "Quick! Move on! Cheer up!" We must work through the pain, find new pieces of ourself. We're supposed to have and experience the whole range of human emotions. I'd like for a year to have a moratorium on the word 'happiness' and replace it with the word 'wholeness'. Ask yourself, "is this contributing to my wholeness?" and if you're having a bad day, it is.
