There’s a lot of beauty in the world, maybe you’re just not looking in the right places.
At the risk of sounding cliche’, events in life that seem to have no silverlining, are most assuredly the events that will teach us the most valuable lessons. The lessons we need to learn in order to live a meaningful life. Unfortunately, most people never learn these lessons because they aren’t willing to sit in the pain and discomfort long enough to learn. They also aren’t willing to tell anyone else they’re suffering so the “normal” state of being is misrepresented as only consisting of happiness.
In the western world, we seem to have an obsession with happiness. We are disillusioned about the tragedy of life and feel as if we’ve been dealt some unfair blow when things crumble around us. When people ask us how we are doing we put on a smile and say, “everything is great!” Anything that could be viewed by others as a setback or struggle we hide from the outside world because after all, suffering shouldn’t be discussed, right?
Wrong! Not just sort of wrong but very wrong! Struggle is a critical part of life, which in turn means sadness, hurt and anger are critical feelings we are meant to experience. We don’t have to go around sharing our sorrows with everyone we meet, but we do have a responsibility to ourselves and the world not to run from them either.
At the end of the year, I spent some time reflecting on the lives of people who hold a special place in my heart. The tragedy of life has run freely through them…
Divorce. Infidelity. Cancer. Dementia. Death of a child. Loss of a business. Death of a parent. Addiction. Betrayal by a friend. Loss of a job.
This vast array of heartache and struggle has occurred within my small, tight knit community of people I’m walking through life with, within the past year. That’s a heavy load of tragedy for such a small group.
That is life. Life is as much struggle as it is pleasure and the reality is, you never feel the true depths of happiness without pain. You never see the beauty of life if you’re never looking at struggle as a path to deeper happiness.
Some suffering seems unnecessary and unexplainable and I do not believe it is all just “part of God’s plan.” I believe we aren’t always supposed to understand it. I believe instead of trying to intellectualize it, we’re supposed to feel it. All of it.
Beauty doesn’t live in happiness alone; it lives in immersing ourselves in the full experience of life. We find it where we least expect it, but only where we are willing to look.
Your happiness is not a gift given to you by others.
Create a mantra for your life. If you aren't writing your story, someone else is writing it for you.
Listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eml-radio-talking-truth/id1498113483?i=1000558947971
Hello my friends!
I'm finishing up the transition away from Locals onto Substack and wanted to be sure each of you have made the necessary adjustments to your accounts. For those of you who have remaining months left on your paid support here, I have comped you the balance over at Substack.
This will be the final week I post content here.
I will resume the live recordings over there, starting with our first call on Friday, March 3rd at 9am/12pm. Invitations to join the Zoom calls will go out on Substack. Mark your calendars!
Also, be sure to download the Substack App! I love the app and find it so helpful in organizing content I want to read later by keeping it on my dashboard.
See you on the other side!
https://eviefatz.substack.com/
One of the biggest challenges in writing my book is not being able to share any of it along the way. Given my narcissistic need for constant approval and attention, not having any feedback is killing me. Even negative attention is better than no attention at all (which explains a lot of my behavior in life), so not only am I missing the praise but I also miss my haters.
I need to break out of this cave. Thanks to Chuck Palahniuk who writes Spoiler Alert on Substack, but you would know as the author of Fight Club, I got the idea to share some excerpts and things that won’t make the final edit. This will give us both what we need. I get some attention and you get some thought provoking words to make you think (and possibly laugh, cry or both.)
Today’s snippet is from the first draft of a chapter titled, Remove Your Kindergarten Name Tag. I am currently on my third revision and we can all be thankful for this. As I walk my readers through the dark hallways of my earliest years, and attempt ...
Wanted to pass this short video along. We think of health in very limited ways. Faith, nature, love, communality, shared human experience…all prove to be just as necessary, if not more so, than going to the gym.
I’ve always viewed and taught health from this perspective. It is my belief the lack of these essential elements is as big an issue in our culture as poor diet and lack of movement.
The takeaway-we can do better🙏🏼