Whether you like it or not you have grown into a body and mindset that seems to govern each day of your life. Some folks don’t mind, but might never think too deeply about it. For others, the mental challenges of simply enduring don’t allow much happiness to creep in.
After all, there’s a big difference between enduring and coping with situations. It takes confidence to create your own path in life. |
The first thing to realize is you can constructively change the way you look at situations as they arrive. This becomes more and more important as you age. The problem is, you get used to what you’ve known through life, and the negative becomes just a habit, even though it may not be your best way to handle things.
After all, there’s a big difference between enduring and coping with situations.
Procrastination
But not having your legal affairs in order is a bad habit. Don’t give up on the idea of leaving this life organized the way you want it. Doesn’t matter how much estate you have, or how little. It affects someone, or some charity that has been helpful.
Regret--many times over!
As I write this it is going on 5 a.m. I started writing at 4 a.m. It is Saturday, my publication deadline day. I’ve had a week to write, so why, oh why, have I left this until now?
Immediately my mind jumps in with the excuses. I mentally review the week, and yes, it has been a busy one. In all honesty though, if I had written a little each day I wouldn’t have been experiencing the adrenaline rush of my panicked writing at this moment.
Yikes, is that the habit I’ve developed for myself? Regretfully, yes. My writing usually becomes a weekly habit. I could improve my relaxation ability and pleasure in life by not being a last-moment person as I go through each week.
I know this. So why don’t I do it? Bad habit. I’m going to change it starting this week. It’s not going to be easy. The very nature of a bad habit developed over years is a hard thing to build into as long-term good one. You have to plug away at it. Minuscule steps. You have to pause and notice how a different behaviour in your part could improve your life.
Bring in your mindfulness
To take part in it you have to be willing to make the best out of anything that happens. You need to embrace the challenges of life, regarding them as ways to become a better person. You need to accept all that life hands you, good and bad, to use as a baseline for your own self-betterment.
Nietzsche knew it
Amor fati is a Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate". It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary. Wikipedia.
So we all come with roots from ancient times. We all come from ancestors who had good and bad times, even though they never checked their Facebook or email hundreds of times each day. They knew war, and survived pandemics.
We are not the first. We will not be the last. But what we can do is learn to accept and embrace what we are faced with in life. I’m definitely going to make mine easier by writing each day.
Weather and the saffron blossoms
Needless to say, the saffron has a sudden growth spurt, but many flowers were damaged by being beaten into the ground. Still managed to process several hundred yesterday though. This is an image of the little bouquet that greeted me yesterday, using a dry period when the blooms mostly started to dry. For more saffron news please check out my saffron page on this site.