When Life Sucks, What Do You Do?
Even when life sucks, YOU choose what you do with it.
Christmas 2022 has come and gone. And this was a truly, spectacularly lousy holiday for me. It sucked. Lots.
First, yes, I acknowledge that I’m whining. But I have a point to make and you need the context.
It began Wednesday night when, for the first time in years, I felt a cold or something coming on. The next morning, I felt majorly off and unwell, took a COVID test – and it was negative. But I felt progressively worse all day and had a fever that night. Friday morning, I took another COVID test – and it was positive. Christmas weekend – with COVID. Delightful.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. No, it sucks much worse. My wife got a call Thursday morning that her mom was taken to the hospital. She packed up a few things and went the 2 hours north to take care of her mentally challenged aunt, who had been staying with her mom.
FYI – every Christmas is spent with my mother-in-law and family at her place. We have a large meal, open gifts, and are there with each other.
They found a problem that they are working on resolving – but my mother-in-law is still in the hospital. What happens next is utterly unknown – so we’re all in limbo with this.
And my wife is still up there at her mom’s place. Fortunately, my wife has remained COVID-free, and I’m isolating.
But we have spent this holiday apart. First time since we got together 11 years ago.
And so, it all sucks
What do you do when it all sucks?
Lament or live
It would be very, very easy to lament what’s going on. I love my mother-in-law – and it’s very upsetting that she’s unwell. My wife’s family is very tight-knit, and this is hard on everyone.
COVID sucks. However, I did all the vaccinations and boosters I could – and apart from one night with a fever, it’s mostly been the equivalent of a nasty cold or sinus infection. I’m breathing fine, never lost my sense of taste, and I suspect I’ll be back to my normal self in a few more days.
Still, I could go on and on about how much all of this sucks. I could lament multiple potential, unknown futures resulting from all of this. I could wallow in the total suckage of this situation – and let it pull me down into a depression.
Or I can live. I can accept that this sucks, it’s not fair or fun, but it is. And since lamenting it will just make me feel worse, I suppose I can choose to live and keep on keeping on.
How? Mindfulness, of course. I can be here, consciously aware, right now – and live. Or I can lament all that’s come to pass and potential, uncertain futures that may or may not be.
I don’t about you, but the logical choice, to me, is to live.
But given the emotions involved, sadness, loneliness, annoyance, anger, and other negative feelings – not lamenting feels challenging.
And that is why this is a choice.
Sometimes life sucks
That’s the truth of it. Sometimes, life sucks. Shit happens. People get unexpectedly ill. You get sick. Relationships end. Jobs are lost. Friends become dumpster fires. And there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it.
If you’re like me, that doesn’t sit well with you. Why can’t you do a damned thing about it? Because it’s not within your control.
Do you like to be in control? I do. Do you like to direct your life experiences to desired outcomes? I suspect that, for the most part, you do. And that’s the hardest thing of all to accept – no control.
But apart from you – specifically your inner being and thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions – you have no other control. Just that seemingly limited amount.
However – that’s actually quite a lot of control. Why? Because it’s really, truly, all about you.
Most, if not all, of the things that make life suck are not in your control. And that’s why life sucks sometimes.
I didn’t ask for COVID. My mother-in-law didn’t ask to be hospitalized at Christmas. My wife didn’t ask to be responsible for her aunt. Yet here we all are.
When you recognize and acknowledge that you have no control – you get to choose what to do next. Lament or live? Complain or accept? Fight or flee? Your reactions are yours to control in the face of whatever sucks in your life right now.
Choose negativity, neutrality, or positivity
Rather than be miserable and lament my situation – I’m writing. We got a new kitchen gadget I’ve set up for us to use. And I’ve made a plan for deep cleaning the apartment when I test negative for COVID again.
I’ve chosen positivity in the face of suckage. I also recognize that as much as this all sucks – it could be far, far worse. And I’m grateful that it’s not.
Maybe how life sucks for you isn’t going to give way to positivity. That’s fair. But given that positive and negative are opposite ends of the flexible cylinder you live life upon, which way you face is a choice you can make. And at the least – face neither and recenter. Choose a neutral stance upon the flexible cylinder of life between the positive and negative extremes. Just make a choice.
Of course, you could choose negativity. Lament what sucks, express how much woe it causes, and allow your feelings to spiral downwards. No matter how you might feel about this, it is a choice.
There is no wrong choice. But all choices have results, consequences, and other outcomes when made. But choice in the face of suckage is a matter of taking control via your conscious awareness of your life experience. As opposed to yielding control to unseen forces of the Universe.
What do you do when it all sucks? The choices are yours to make.
Choosing what to do when life sucks isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you recognize that you have no control over anything that makes life suck, you get to decide how to react and what to do with that knowledge. Knowing that it’s about things over which you have no control, you get to choose to focus on something positive, negative, or neutral, and work with that and whatever the circumstances of the experience are from there.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you. That can expand to change the bigger picture matters, too.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Lastly, the better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can also open those around you to their own empowerment.
To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the four hundred-and-sixty-fourth entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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