Life is half shit
Episode 003: Life is half shit
In the age of happiness and ideals we may never be able to achieve or sustain long term, I want to offer that life is half shit and it’s a good thing. Listen to find out why.
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Episode 003: Life is half shit transcript
Alright so I wanted to record a quick episode today and I know that amidst all the chaos that we have going on and with the content overload that we are all experiencing maybe a few minutes is already overwhelming for you, and I realize that this does date the episode but I wanted to talk about something that I already wanted to talk about on the podcast and it’s the concept of how life is half shit.
I really like this concept because to me, I am not a very religious person, and I am somewhat of a spiritual person, and in my quest as a yoga teacher reading a lot of more esoteric or Buddhist or different philosophies or just trying to dissect the meaning of life a little bit I found myself kind of unhappy with the general idea that “just be happy,” “just smile” everything will be ok.
I like to think that the concept of life half shit explains how the world works without needing to put bigger or some sort of god into the conversation. In my mind, the way it works is that half the time you are in a set of circumstances or you are in a place or you are at a time where things are coming together in an unfortunate matter, and things are really hard, and things are really shitty. And I like to believe that half the time you are in the right set of circumstances, you are at the right place at the right time, with the right people and that when life is the other 50. And this concept is not my own, it’s not something that I thought up but it’s something that really resonates with me because the way I see it is if the meaning of life is to be happy than it’s in direct conflict to how I feel about some of the bad things happening in the world. So if I think of wars, or if I think of genital mutilation, and if I think of children being abused, if I think of people in very unfortunate situations, right, then I can’t say that I just need to work on my mind to be happy, because I can’t be happy about things that are sad.
I had a family emergency last year and two really tragic things happened at the same time, actually, the same exact hour, believe it or not, talk about circumstance, and place and time… and I couldn’t have just thought that if I am smiling enough this situation will go away, and I will be happy, right?
So if I take on the concept that half of the things that happen to us are not awesome, then it allows for this space for the other half to be beautiful and awesome. And it allows for this level of hope that’s not foolish or, mom used to say about my sister that she would sit on a pink cloud and the wind would blow her in different directions because she was kind of airy, and up in the clouds in her head, so I am talking about hope that is not foolish or sitting on a pink cloud, but an understanding that the good comes with the bad and the bad does come with the good. And it gives you this moment to pause and reflect to let those two things coexist. Let it be hope in your mind that times can be good again, let it be an understanding that knowing that some stuff is really hard, makes you really appreciate when things are good and so in the hardship, you can sit in the hardship, you can sit with the negative, and allow it to be what it is.
I’m reading a lot of posts online that talk about how to feel differently than how we feel and I don’t want to feel differently. I want to feel what it’s like to be isolated, what it feels like to be celebrating a birthday in my back yard across the fence with my neighbors toasting in the air, to be talking to my friends and family via zoom, with a glass of drink in our hands, and I want to feel this moment as it is. So it was my birthday yesterday and I’ve gotten a lot of messages of how we are going to do something when we can get out finally and without really trying to be rude, my thoughts on it are that I don’t want to celebrate my birthday later, because I celebrated it as it was in the quarantine as I could and so next year, when we are not in a quarantine, it’s going to be really fun to go somewhere and celebrate it with the people I love in the same space together. This type of birthday will now, and it wasn’t a bad birthday, but will now give me the reflection I need what a good birthday is. This isolation is teaching us how to see what it’s like to be with our loved ones 24/7. It really bums me out that people are posting about how their children and how their significant others are making them crazy and how challenging it is. I am hoping that what comes out of this is that people realize how important our educational system is, that our children are occupied all the time, how privileged we are that we can take them to soccer practice and all over the place so our kids can be active or play outside. How much we can appreciate the outdoor air because we are inside all the time. How much we can appreciate Mother Nature, cleaning up air pollution, because we are flying less planes, right? So in all of this bad things, there is a good thing. And the two coexist. The two coexist. And you can’t see the edges of something without knowing that there is a background, right? I think Alan Watts talks about that in one of his YouTube videos, it’s very fascinating to listen to him talk about this.
I want to leave you today with this thought that half of life is shit and that’s ok and it gives us the pause and opportunity to appreciate when it’s very very good and teaches us that the good doesn’t last forever. So when it is shit, we have the opportunity to sit with that too, and it’s not, it doesn’t have to mean anything, you don’t have to become a victim, that some bad stuff is just happening to you, and the world is terrible to you. You can just chalk it up to that 50% for that moment of time or for that week. Or we gonna chalk it up to the first quarter or second quarter of 2020. Life is just shit right now, but really and truly even if you watch all of what is happening, it’s beautifully sunny today in Ohio, and some of my flowers are growing, and I’m starting tomatoes from seed for the first time. So life doesn’t stop, there is beauty around us, there is growth and wonderful things that you can see even in the despair or when things are shitty.
This concept to me is a really lovely way to not get too esoteric or too religious but kinda understand the world around me and put it in a perspective where I can just know that this is what it is without attaching any kind of additional meaning to it, that would take me down a rabbit hole.
I hope this makes sense to you, I hope this gives you hope, not the pink cloud kind but maybe the realist kind that this is what the times are and I hope we can carry on together as a society and learn from the shit side of the past couple of weeks or the past couple of months if we think globally and see how awesome the other 50% will be when we get out of it.
So thank you for listening and I will catch you guys next time.