life, not little
We belittle our experiences a lot. We tell each other that “that’s life” and “everyone has it rough” and “you better get used to it.” But why don’t we strive for a better experience? A happier day? More smiles and laughter in our lives? Why do we tell each other that this state of misery and complacency is normal? Why don’t we strive to become better and to make life not “ugh it’s just life” and instead “Life!”? Instead of telling ourselves that this state of unhappiness is abnormal, we tell ourselves that it’s something that we have to get used to. It seems a little bit sad, doesn’t it? Instead of becoming a race towards a happier day each day, it’s a boring walk through life as we watching the leaves fall around us, and instead of jumping into the pile of leaves and creating a world of color, we’ve decided to rake it all in and stuff it into Hefty trash bags. Life has become something that we just trudge through until our dying breath. Before then, we sit complacently at our computer screens and 9-5 jobs and watch the hour tick by instead of begging it to slow down. Time on earth became a burden instead of a blessing and we are constantly asking ourselves what we’re living for and complaining about the reasons we have found for now. We sedate ourselves with happier thoughts instead of happier lives and convince ourselves that it’s okay - that’s how life should be lived because “that’s just life.” What if we told our children to live each day as if it were our last and to love life as it is given because not everyone is as blessed as we are? Not everyone has the liberty to complain about life and to wish for each moment to go faster. Some people wish for the time to pass by because they want to forget what it feels like to be hungry and cold at the same time in the middle of a New England storm. Some people want time to pass so that they can just finally have an answer to their age-old question: where is my next meal coming from? Some people want their lives to pass them by because they don’t have a reason to be happy anymore. We have family, we have education, we have warmth, we have liberty and agency over our lives. There are a lot of people that don’t have that. This doesn’t mean that we should undermine our experiences because they’re not “as hard” or because someone else is “struggling more.” That might be true, but each of our experiences is valid because we are encountering them at face value. What may be one man’s life-or-death may be my day-to-day struggle and vice versa - but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t fight for my right to smile and to move on.