Nothing is still Something.

Photo via artlimited.net

Lately I've been making a lot of tough decisions in my life. None that I have been forced to make, but making choices to make myself happier.

I've found (especially since I've been out of University) that it becomes increasingly easy to let your life happen to you and be complacent with that. I will be the first to admit that my theme for life is quite often "death by a thousand cuts". I've been good at ignoring my own happiness because things have been "just okay", and the pain of confronting what seems to be the problem seems far worse than tolerating the day to day pain.

In an effort to nip this admittedly bad habit in the bud, I have been keeping one thing in my mind. If I were someone else and saw myself, what would I think? Would I think "she seems happy"? Or would it be more like "she would be so much happier if...."?

I feel like this is a version of caring what other people think of you - and in a way it is - but I'm not sure it is always unhealthy to be concerned with how you appear to others. I don't think I would make it a practice to be so concerned with other's thoughts of me that it became detrimental to my own well-being, but don't we all generally strive to be a better person?

I can't even count the times I have watched a friend go through what seemed like hell for some guy who wasn't treating her well. From the outside it was so easy to say "she needs to get out." Once I went through that myself, though, it was so different. I understood how hard it was, and it didn't just happen overnight. Things were good, then they got worse, but there would be moments of light that provided hope that things would get good again. The one day I thought "if I were my friend, how would this look to me?" Thats when I realized that the quiet daily suffering I went through was so much worse than if I had just moved on.

I think sometimes it is hard to remember that doing nothing is still doing something. Choosing not to act, or to make a decision "later", is still a choice. Sometimes it is worth the wait, but if you're going to have to choose eventually, you might as well do it now. It feels good to make conscious, active decisions about your life, even if it is tough at first. In the end, it is better than feeling just okay.