I'm not sure which word you are expecting but the F-word I am referring to is
actually FORCE.
You ever had a day when you just feel agitated? Either your
angry or depressed, disappointed or tired, bored or frustrated: whatever
the reason, you just feel agitated. As my sister calls it “your stuck in bad
mood land”. Then you open your Facebook page and see the stream of positive
quotes and supposed high-energy happy people reminding you Life is Short! Every
Day is a Gift! It’s All In the Attitude! Gratitude Makes Life Better! It’s like
everyone is forcefully saying “Be
Happy Damn It!” And instead of feeling inspired and rejuvenated, you just want
to take the happy I’m-so perfect-and-my-life-is-always-so great person, pluck them out of
the little profile picture thumbnail, and drop kick them into the black hole of
bad mood land!
I’m not being a sourpuss today. Actually I AM feeling
blessed today and I made sure I waited until a good day to write this because I
didn’t want to use my blogging post just to vent on one of my bad days. But I
did want to say this: When you’re having one of those days and feel that way, I
GET IT.
Who the heck wants to be FORCED to be happy?! That’s when
Force becomes the F-word! You can’t force gratitude, you can’t force joy, you
can’t force peacefulness, you can't even force that state where you just don’t feel much
because you just don’t care enough. Sure, you CAN guide yourself to feeling
positive but that is only if you are inspired or motivated enough to muster up
the strength on that particular day. It’s not always easy to do and you
shouldn’t feel bad if it doesn’t come naturally.
The point is, we all have bad days and we should be allowed
to. We shouldn’t feel the need to be blissfully happy every moment of every
day. Just as long as in the middle of the “shit happens” moment you are capable
of closing your eyes, taking a deep belly breath and saying “I am NOT happy at
this moment BUT that wont last”. You DON’T need to immediately “turn that frown
upside down” (if I were reading this to you, you would know from the tone of my
voice how sarcastic I’m being using that stupid phrase!) Life with all its
daily struggles is hard enough, we don’t need to add the pressure of being constantly
happy.
I have to admit, I am guilty as charged with trying to be
uplifting and positive. I try to write from a place in my heart that is filled with compassion
and hope while my ultimate desire is to inspire something beneficial to the
human spirit. I consider it one of the best feelings in the world to be lucky enough to take credit for someone changing course from negative to positive. Personally, I love reading inspirational quotes because sometimes a few
strong but sincere words are enough to break me out of a bad spell. It’s like
to a slap in the face that does not sting but instead heals.
But with all that said, I think
everyone deserves a bad day now and then. You don’t want to be permanently stuck in bad mood land, but
a couple hours or one day won’t kill your spirit. In fact, maybe we have to
have those bad days once in a while so that we can compare them to the better
days and that is when you can feel blessed. Blessed not because someone told
you to feel that way, not because others tried to force you to that place of
gratitude, but because you earned it through your crappy day experience and
arrived there all on your own.
