The Yin and Yang of Happiness

There’s no reason for me to complain. I am the happiest I’ve been in a long time, possibly my whole life. But after the year I’ve had, I always have the next possible disaster in the back of my head. As an example, the moment I am writing this, I am on vacation in Latvia and sitting in the beautiful landscape of Sigulda. As my friend and I were both too lazy to organize a trip, we’re winging it. We drove to the airport without any kind of plan and ended up buying last-minute tickets to Riga. Now, I worry about what’s to come. For the love of god, I can’t shake the feeling that the next hotel we’re staying at will be an absolute schabracke.

The place this post was written at. And no, I don’t own a fancy Moet blanket. I ‘borrowed’ it from a bar.

If today sucks, I think of a better tomorrow.
Earlier this year I came pretty close to the edge when I was sick for a month and later found out I had Diabetes Type I. Not gonna lie, that time sucked and I believe I spent quite a few blog posts venting about it. In the end, I had no other choice than to move on. I had the find good things in the future I could look forward to: I made a tattoo appointment and plans for a summer vacation (driving to the airport blindly thankfully doesn’t require a lot of planning).

Forget your expectations.
My life is currently changing pretty fast and I don’t really know what’s to come. I believe that happiness and sadness don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I implemented a system you could call the Yin and Yang of happiness: When I’m happy, I still struggle to appreciate the good things in my life. But when I’m sad I am also aware that the future’s gonna be better. Everything’s gonna be fine unless you die and then it’s over anyway.

I will never lose my will to live and you shouldn’t either.
As a teenager, my life wasn’t fun as I was being bullied in school. Dark thoughts appeared quite naturally as I slowly drifted into a place of depression. On the worst days I cut myself to make me feel something again. But I never really wanted to kill myself. I thought about the future lying ahead and all the things I don’t know yet and still want to experience. I often escaped reality and lived a phantasy life filled with all the things missing from my life. Eventually, I decided to go to a new school which was one of the hardest decisions I had to make up until that point. However, it was worth it and I never looked back.

In the end, it is true what they say: you cannot enjoy the good days if you don’t know what a bad day feels like. I may see the bad in everything good that happens and you may think that’s depressing. To me it’s a coping mechanism that’s oh so familiar. It made me come this far but it may be time to be a little more optimistic.

How do you deal with feeling low? And do you sometimes struggle to appreciate the good things in your life?

BenLeander