Rational Insanity
After the storm II: Picking up the pieces
Often we are faced by the question of how to rebuild a life that has been ravaged by a proverbial storm. Many of us whine and squirm trying to convince ourselves that we have lost everything and can barely stand on our two feet. Some of us feel that there is no use reclaiming what we lost because the reason to do so no longer exists. Even a few would say that picking up the pieces of a shattered life is like picking up shards of glass; you hurt yourself in the process, and so to avoid the pain, it would be best to just wallow in our misery and leave everything to fate. Well, I have news for you, none of these things is the right thing to do. I say this for several reasons, let's take it point by point.
Point One – For the issue of losing everything and everyone: We haven't lost anything, it only feels like it because we had built an entire world around the person whom we lost and so when we lose that person, the fantasy world we built goes with him/her. In essence, we only lost a fantasy and nothing more. The trouble with this is that we also lose our faith in love. I suggest we just go with the flow; savor the misery, because everything is temporary. Soon enough, we would be clawing our way towards another relationship disaster, like we never really learned our lesson, because in truth and in fact, we never really do. The eternal pursuit for happiness is a given and a built-in feature of the wretched organ that we have in our chest or our hypothalamus, for that matter.
Point Two – For the issue of not having any more reason to reclaim what we lost: Wake up and smell the coffee dearies; our mere existence is reason enough to snap back and conquer the world. Just as happiness is a temporary respite from pain, a failed relationship is simply a buzzer telling us to get back to reality and get on with our lives; a life that we momentarily put on hold so that we could dedicate ourselves to a fairy tale. If we think about it, it actually seems really stupid of us to put our entire life on hold just because we think we have found the kind of happiness that would sustain us for as long as we live. Reality check – no such thing exists, only a very clever imitation of it. So, cut the losses, and get back to your daily grind.
Point Three – For the matter of picking up pieces of glass and hurting ourselves more: Let's look at it this way, if what we are picking up is pieces of our own lives, how could that hurt? The reason why we hurt ourselves is because we also try to pick up pieces of the ended relationship, a life that is no longer ours, a life that we shared with somebody. Consider this – two glass vases shatter on the floor, one representing your own life, and the other representing the life that you shared with your special someone. How are we to know which pieces to pick up? This time visualize your life as a golden vase, and your other fantasy life as the glass vase, wouldn't be it much easier to pick up the golden vase that did not shatter in the first place and turn a blind eye at the other shards that remain? A warning though – you will feel tempted to thrash the glass pieces and ground them finely with your feet, but you might hurt yourself more if you do so, resis! t the temptation. Vengeance is, after all, not ours to give.
All points discussed, let me now tell you what to do to make sure that you get your life back in one piece – don't cry over spilled milk, don't even bother to wipe it off the floor, have your good for nothing boyfriend/girlfriend worry about how to clean it up, it's not your mess anyway. You are in one perfect, unbroken piece. You are a creature of perfection, intellect, and sensibility. You are beyond pain and the pursuit of feigned happiness. No one can hurt you anymore than yourself, so whatever pain you are experiencing, you have brought upon yourself. Remember that in this life, no one will bother to lick your wounds for you, you will have to do it all on your own. This is the reason why God gave us our own tongue, for the same reason that He gave us only two feet and not four. We are all victims of our own doing and if we cannot muster the strength to re-claim this knowledge and know how special we are to have been given a tongue and two feet for sanely divine purposes, then take a noose and hang yourself, you are no better than pond scum or amoeba.
Be rational; be insane…every once in a while! TTFN!
I love you all! Byers!