Living Happiness

Good Easter Monday morning everyone. Today we will be talking about zombies. What? What’s that you say? Well … okay … maybe not so much zombies but I did get your attention, didn’t I?

It’s Easter Monday morning for everyone on the Catholic/Western calendar, which means for a lot of the people reading this blog = you. Many of you were probably out yesterday hiding Easter eggs that will never be found until they start rotting under a bush, traveling to Meemaw and Pop-pop’s house for ham and strawberry cake and any other food that can possibly be made with Jell-O, and probably going to church at some point with all the other people wearing dazed expressions and trying to remember all five million verses to “Up From the Grave He Arose.”

Yes, this past weekend was all about celebrating both resurrection and rebirth. The arrival of Spring. The hope in our hearts that just because things die, this doesn’t mean the end. YAY for this comfort! But, hey, wait a minute … what if some things really are just better off dead?

Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of Easter. This is just the start of Holy Week here in Greece, and I am already gearing up to dye a ton of eggs a really dark red, make tsoureki, and go walk under Christ’s tomb on Friday night while Judas burns in a corner (more on that later … maybe). Yes, I truly love Easter. My heart swells all week long. I cry when Jesus dies. I mourn all day Saturday. And then when the Holy Light is passed around on Saturday evening and the church becomes filled with radiance and the midnight hour strikes and the bells begin pealing madly, my heart feels like it’s too big for my chest — it’s just going to pop out!

But, really, aren’t there just some things we don’t want to see resurrected? I can think of a few: leisure suits, calling men “Daddy-O,” parachute pants, spiral perms, Doc Martens and flannels, the Macarena. And there are some other things, too: bad jobs, bad relationships, our old selves (before therapy). Isn’t it better that at least some things be left alone? Maybe dead is the best state for them.

The reason I say this is because I’m remarkably good at letting things live on well past their sell-by date (yick) and at also trying to revive things that really just don’t need to be revived (and ending up with zombies. See? I told you there’d be zombies here). I’m the consummate optimist thinking, “Maybe things aren’t as bad as I thought they were/are?” Sometimes I am proved wrong, but there are more times that I am not.

Over the years I have had to learn when to let go of things, when to let things die. It is never easy for me. I want to believe that things will get better, heal, have miraculous recoveries, be resurrected and not stink when they rise from the tomb (I totally understand Mary & Martha’s concern on this one in the great Lazarus incident) but the truth is, this is not always the case. And I have learned to accept that this doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

The letting go is a bit hard. Losses of bad jobs and bad relationships, while almost always better for me in the long run, still leave me grieving. So I let myself have mini-funerals of the emotional nature. But then, after the grieving’s over, I move on.

What I then experience is not so much rebirth or resurrection as an opening out of my life. There’s now room in it for new things to come in. It’s a remarkable feeling when I realize this, and freeing, too. And I begin to anticipate what good thing will come in to take its place. Good things usually do … at least, if that’s what I’m expecting (see my notes on the Laws of Attraction).

So, on this Easter Weekend just passed, I thought less about resurrection and more about burial. It’s okay to let things end. And perhaps that idea doesn’t run as counter to Easter as one might be led to believe. Maybe, just maybe, when we allow these deaths (in all their finality) to happen in our lives, what we’re really allowing to be resurrected is ourselves. Maybe the more important rebirth is not of these things but of the hopes and dreams and desires that we let perish while weighted down with these other concerns. Maybe …

So, on this Easter Monday, may you be blessed enough to know when to let things go. There’s a time for everything. Even death.

Good week to all of you.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I kept the commandments, of which there were many. Not just the 10 main ones we all know of, but a whole bunch of other ones, too, including:

« Thou shalt not beg off a party just to stay home and read a book — even if it is more fun than three hours of small talk with people you don’t even like.

« Thou shalt not not go to the gym, or your ass will pay for it later.

« Thou shalt not say what you really think but, instead, what will get you in the least amount of trouble.

« Thou shalt do your best in everything because to do less than that is unthinkable, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And on and on.

I grew up on a strict diet of Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Nots, primarily owing to the fact that I grew up in a strict religious home of both the evangelical and pentecostal persuasion. Guilt was, of course, the side-dish that came with everything.

The Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not meal on which I frequently dined did not limit itself to the Basic 10–first and foremost of the food groups. It also expanded outward into other codes of conduct: job, dress, dating, boys, socializing, dealing with your elders, dealing with yourself, housekeeping, etc. I walked around most of the time with a list of “Have To’s” in my head: I have to do this, I must do that, I can’t not do that. Needless to say, I also walked around most of the time miserable. Somewhere I was always forgetting a rule. Or blatantly ignoring it and then suffering the pangs of “Oh, no! What will happen now?” thoughts. It was all very healthy, I assure you.

Fortunately for me, one day I met someone who had the gall to say to me, “No, you don’t have to!”

“What?! Me not have to do something?!” I answered back, “What do you mean?”

The person galling me was my therapist, and what she went on to say made a lot of sense. Very few of us have to do all of the things that we say we have to do. Are there things that it’s a good idea to do? Yes. Are there things that it’s better for us to do than others? Yes. Are there things that might produce more desirable outcomes than others? Yes. But are these things that we have to do? No.

This got me thinking. And I realized that, when I got right down to it, there were very few things in my life that really had to be done. Of these were essentially the ones that would keep me alive:

« Eat

« Drink water

« Sleep

The rest was all fluff, really. And even the eating, drinking water, and sleeping tasks were things I could choose not to do. At great detriment to myself, of course, but I could in fact choose not to do them.

And this was when I had my epiphany. Most of these “commandment” lives we lead deprive of us of two things:

1. Our sense of free will

2. Our sense of ourselves

When we are given a list of Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots, life is easier. More miserable maybe, but easier. It takes the guesswork out of decision making: “What is it you’re asking me to do? Oh, yes. That’s right. That’s on my Thou Shalt list. Sure, yep, I can go along with that.”

It also deadens us to knowing what we really want. The question, “What do I want to do?” has no place in the lexicon of Commandment-ville. It’s not about what I want to do, it’s about what I have to do, whether I like it or not. But … who says?

And this is where we get down to brass tacks. After my conversation with my therapist (actually, after many conversations with my therapist) and more mulling over my epiphany, I realized that there’s nothing innately “wrong” with these commandments themselves as long as the conclusions they present are conclusions I myself can reach in my own life. That is to say, if I begin to question my drive to do or not to do something and can come to my own understanding that, “Yes, Chania Girl, eating is in your best interest today,” then by all means I embrace it. But the point is, I know why I am embracing whatever it is I’m embracing. And … I don’t make it a commandment. I look at it instead as taking some good advice.

A lot of my decisions used to be based on guilt and the “have to” world of Commandment-ville. These decisions were, therefore, based primarily in fear–fear of what would happen if I did or didn’t do this or that.

When I had my epiphany, I realized that there was a better place to operate from–a place of love.

Now when I am confronted with decisions and must contemplate what route to take, I ask myself: “What do I really want to do?” If the answer is hard for me to reach, I rephrase the question: “What would I most regret not doing?” I usually find that I can then make a clear decision, based in love. And no guilt or fear is involved at all.

I am not saying these things to disparage “the rules” we live by. By I do believe that what is important is not the rules themselves but the spirit behind them. Sadly, most of us spend our lives obeying (or disobeying) rules with no thought as to why, and living lives propelled by fear and anxiety rather than love, forgiveness, and acceptance.

This is why you will never find on my page a 10 Commandments For Loving Yourself or a 15 Rules to Live By To Create a Happier You.

Your journey is uniquely yours. It is a journey of honoring yourself and making choices that benefit you. It is a journey that can be made in love. If you choose for it to be.

Om shanti.

Namaste.