I would just like to add before this is read that I am in no way directing this piece to one person in particular. It is merely a reflection I observed throughout my day. Should you read this and feel that I am directing this toward you, know that I'm not and merely considered more the reason as to why you think maybe I am. I am just as guilty of letting my bad day tell me what to do. Considering the number of letters and postings I have put up here that do sometimes antagonize people, I thought I should let you know, these are just my rambling thoughts while sipping a hot cup of chocolate...
People are too busy worried about getting their next fix. We're all in some way addicted to drama. We may be addicted to our own or reality TV drama, we may be addicted to our friends or celebrity drama unfolding. We all say we don't care. The reality is that we really do. It feels good to know that we get to be in the know or our drama makes us important. The painful truth of that matter is that other people may not care about our own personal drama but about someone else's.
We're a society so fixed on staying angry, on who wronged us. We're all guilty of it. God knows I am! We wanted the wrongs righted. We want to be able to breathe a sigh that says we championed the villain and slayed the beast the hurt us and kicked us down. The degree of the wrongs or the level rather isn't up to us to interpret, despite the fact that it's our own wrong. We may feel it's completely worth venting and spitting over while others, be it friends, acquaintances, co-workers, or even family, tell us whether or not to worry. Have you ever noticed that we never listen to what others tell us? Repeat it over and over again if you like, the degree to which you worry about it is still up to you while someone else tells you different.
The thing about drama is that we let it control our attitudes to an extent that is unhealthy. Tiger had how many hoes?? He said that to her?? I'm so angry for him!! There's this redundant saying that attitudes are contagious. The fact is that they are. And anyone who's seen Pretty Woman agrees with Julia Roberts: the bad stuff is always easier to believe. Why is that?
Because it hurts us to tell someone the truth about a matter; therefore, it should hurt someone else just as much to tell us the truth about us. In my nearly thirty years of life, this is just something I've noticed to be true in not only my own world but in the world's of my other friend's as well. We all think we're right, and maybe we are. Who's to say that in every argument, both sides are right? There can be two wrongs and there can be two rights. Just because someone calls you fat or a drama addict doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong or right. It just means someone else sees something different than you.
When something good happens to us, we rejoice. Have you ever timed how long you were happy about something? When something positive enters our existence, the people in our environment are joyful with us. Have you ever timed how long it took someone else to tell you to calm down your own excitement? How often do we take the time to pass along our positive attitude to others? Better yet, how often have you tried and been shunned for the very idea of trying to make someone smile, even if it was just for a second? I'm guilty of not doing that enough. Sometimes it feels like when I do, I get scolded. Other times, I feel more use for myself when I know I've put a grin on some one's face and their laughter in the air.
Now think about how many times we've had a negative attitude. It's been our own personal, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Nothing can go right. Everything can go wrong. I have been the walking Murphy's law. How often are we guilty of allowing our everyday frustrations control our emotional well being? How often do we discourage those who attempt to make us feel better when they care enough to light up our eyes? I'm sorry to everyone I've ever put down for trying to put me up.
We don't realize what our own attitudes can do to others until it's been done to us. It hurts when someone doesn't realize that you care. It's so much easier for us to pay forward our bad days instead of our good and so much harder for us to appreciate those who want to cast some ray of sunshine on our cloudy, cold day. It doesn't matter if it's a right or wrong, it's a matter of dramatizing our own emotions. We blind ourselves with our own present emotional well-being to the point we can't see what we do to the attitudes of others. When we try, we learn our lesson, and make sure others learn it, too- even if they don't have to. The sad part is that because of that, we kill the potential for a happier society.
In Utopia, the criminals are the people who are raised to steal, cheat, and destroy. They are then punished for the very things that they are taught to do. They never learn to perform any differently. In today's society, the people who pay forward their good deeds are the one's punished for trying to make the unhappy happy. No good deed goes unpunished. I learned that lesson today.
There is no good timing for happiness when anger, hurt, or frustration is involved.
Just as you learned your lesson, I learned mine.
The difference in a positive attitude and a negative one is that the negative gives up while the positive keeps going. Just because someone else doesn't want to smile doesn't mean that I don't. The content inherently want to share their felicity.
Yes, we're addicted to drama. We're addicted to ourselves. Something to remember about the people who want you to smile when you are stressed, hurt, venting, getting over, or stewing over your own drama: those are the people who love you and your drama...no matter how important it really is.
I have my own faults and I have my own drama that I'm guilty of obsessing over too much. The next time someone tries to make me smile, I hope I'm not so blinded I can't remember what it's like from their view. I hope I smile back.
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