Sarah Nyhan

A happy life comes from a life that is enjoyable. Not from a life chasing after trying to make other people happy.

If I’m not happy then that means I don’t have a life that I enjoy. Seems obvious now, but for most of my life I was taught that I’d enjoy life when everyone around me was happy. That’s what I was constantly chasing after. Until I completely burned myself out. Until I finally realized people benefited from holding me hostage by always setting the bar higher and higher and never giving their approval.

Now I have to take care of me first. Now I have to save myself first. Now I am wholly responsible for my own happiness. Now, that I am a capable adult, I am responsible for not abandoning myself. For anyone else.

This is a very hard pill to swallow if you wholeheartedly previously bought into the codependency you were taught and groomed for. When people tell you that you’re part of a team or part of a family. It sounds good. But then you wake up one day and realize sometimes those are just words to them. Sometimes you are giving way more than they are to the cause. Sometimes those words mean way more to you than they mean to them. At least in actions.

Sometimes you realize you are giving way more than they are. Sometimes they are taking way more than they are giving. They are asking way more than they are doing.

Which is fine if you have that excess to give. And you want to give it.

Where it turns ugly is when it’s even many times overtly communicated that there is at least mutual respect, if not reciprocation. Said specifically, in my case, to manipulate you. Even to my face.

But no one would be that cruel, right? No one would be that careless, right?

Announcement for planet Earth: many people espouse going to church yet leave those doors Sunday after Sunday without the fear of God. Although true Love has nothing to really fear in terms of punishment, maybe I’d allow a little more religion back just for the sake of some sanity up in this bitch. In this crazy fucked up world right now. Where it seems we have no value for Life. For each other. Even for ourselves.

Could we use a little false fear to at least get us back on track in terms of doing what seems like better things? The ends justifying the means?

I have enough business worrying about me. Worrying about my life. Before I try going off saving the whole world again.

Just hard to value myself when it’s hard to feel hopeful that anything will ever get better otherwise. When it feels like you’re living in the middle of a landslide headed 100+ miles per hour straight towards hell.

And let’s go there. What if that is exactly what’s going on?

The good news is hell isn’t for punishment or destruction. It’s for refinement. For purification. The same things we pray for. Just the hard way. Not people waking up by choice. No, them demanding the painful way. Maybe even the most painful ways. Stubbornly clinging to fear. To the darkest sides.

Maybe because they don’t know any alternative. They’ve never seen another way. I can certainly consider giving them that. In just the first few examples that come to mind.

I guess if you want so badly to give away something, to still try saving humanity… if you need more motivation than just saving yourself… think about how saving yourself is giving everyone an example to follow. Or at least consider. That they won’t die and the world won’t fall apart if they actually value themselves.

If the alternative to the common narrative actually looks and feels better then maybe all these words, fun as they may be to volley, will be completely unnecessary. People are attracted to energy. That is capable of breaking through all their internal intellectual bullshit. We are humans attracted to Life and Love. Despite our best efforts to argue otherwise in order to ultimately fail in hedging against inevitable tragedies.

Look, we either embrace what’s left of this human experience. Say “fuck it” to all the fear-based formalities clung to by the vocal majority. And go get what we want. Or at least value dying trying to do so.

Or we can sit around like so many others. Year after year. Waiting for someone else to show up and do for us what we can do for ourselves.

The sad, sad fact is maybe you did deserve more. But there’s probably not anyone available to give you now what others should have given you earlier. It just doesn’t work like that. Look around. Everyone, almost everyone, is struggling. To keep it together. To have any for themselves. Much less excess for you. To stop their whole lives to do for you. To pamper, and I do mean even Pamper, you.

That’s sad. You can definitely mourn that. The reality that sometimes other people are dealt what looks like much better cards than you. There’s certainly an argument for how did we each end up where we are.

You’re entitled to sit as long as you’d like feeling sad and angry about that. While other people decide to accept that it is what it is. And figure out how they’re going to still get what they want. If in fact nobody is ever coming to pay off the debt they’re owed.

You know what my real fear is? That we don’t get to pass Go, we don’t get to move on – cosmically – until we learn each and every lesson. I am terrified that if I sit back on my laurels, choosing a life of pouting about even justifiable deep deep wounds, that I will have to live this damn life all over again on the other side until I learn the lessons I was given the opportunity to learn this time. That terrifies me. I don’t want to live the past over again.

I want to get to the good part.

So even if it wasn’t my fault – what am I here to learn? If our spirits keep getting recycled until we get it, then what am I here to learn?! And fucking learn it already.

If I live in a world where everything I need keeps showing up for me so that I will eventually get what I ultimately really want, then how can I see these situations differently?

It’s about showing up. It’s about returning to our bodies. Returning to ourselves. I think learning to truly value ourselves before we can sincerely value others. In the healthiest and meaningful ways. Beyond the superficial. Beyond empty words. Beyond all the pomp.

People have given up. To the point where they can’t even conceptualize better at this point. Beyond surviving.

Challenge that. If you really believe better is actually possible. Then shut your mouth and really go Live it. Show us out loud. For real this time.

Not just in lots of fluffy pretty words.

Seeing is believing. My Love.