Saturday Morning

Every now and then I get a wild hair and decide to do something... unusually crazy. Anyone who knows me knows that if it's unusually crazy for me it's pretty out there. I have been going to therapy for weeks now and taking on one little thing at a time and trying to get over this rough patch in my life and yesterday I felt as though things were starting to go in the right direction in more than one area. Life has it's ups AND downs. There is no entitlement. You are not OWED a good day. You don't DESERVE to be happy. YOU make YOU happy or you don't. No one can GIVE you happy. You either decide to be happy and do healthy things or you decide to be miserable and do unhealthy things. There is plenty of grey out there, don't take me wrong. However, discussing the grey would take away from the point I'm trying to make. How you feel, ultimately, is a choice you make. Now, I suffer from depression and TRUST ME, if someone was to tell me "You are depressed because you WANT to be that way". I might do something .... a little......violent.

However, if we understand what is going on it can lessen the impact of things around us. There are people out there who suffer from hyper mania. These are the people who are ALWAYS excited, happy, bubbly, bouncy, and all those other words used to describe these completely annoying and confusing people. We get annoyed because we don't understand. FINE, I get it. However, such a thing does exist! I couldn't believe it. I thought those people were just suffering from a mild form of mental retardation. No, seriously, I thought that there must be something wrong with someone who is ALWAYS up. Yes, apparently it's a mental condition. How SICK and twisted is our society that when someone is TOO HAPPY we call it a "mental condition??".

So, occasionally I get this hair up my back side. Yes I'm returning to the point now, you can stop wondering WHEN the heck I will get back to it. This morning I woke up alone in bed and decided to MAKE today a good day. It's Saturday and I don't have to get out of bed until I'm darn good and ready to. So I slept in an hour or two. Stretching out like a cat before leaving my bed, making it, then going to the living room. I pulled out a Yoga DVD and my Yoga Mat and did a 30 minute "rejuvenating" exercise. To me it was a bunch of stretching and breathing. Nothing complex. Yoga isn't rocket science. You don't even have to be flexible, there are DVDs out there like mine that show how someone stiff as a board can still start to do the movements. After doing Yoga, I took a nice, long, HOT shower and woke up again for the third time this morning.  

Then I decided to make myself something healthy for breakfast and as I bit into my banana and smelled the aroma of my coffee brewing, I woke up again. I'm REFUSING to rush myself today. It's Saturday, I don't have any deadlines, and I don't have any work that needs to get done. What a lucky SOB I am today. I have this white board on my fridge where I sometimes write a "Note to self". I think that if I write myself motivational and happy things to read eventually the thoughts will sink in, even if I'm not sure I believe the false optimism at the moment I write it. Sometimes I write a note to my S.O. Significant Other so that when she comes over she might see it and laugh at me for leaving her a note on my fridge. Today, however, I wrote something different. This is the quote I wrote on my fridge this morning and the only reason I'm posting today, was to share this with you.

"Enjoy every single moment, each may be your last. Love, live, learn, repeat. Realize how lucky you are, and be thankful." -Matt

Simple, profound words. I'm sure that someone else may  have wrote them somewhere. Maybe I read them on a Facebook post some time ago and some how it stuck in the back of my mind. I'm not claiming to be the first person on earth to put these words together in this order. I would never plagiarize intentionally. The thoughts just struck me as odd. That I had to remind myself these simple truths. I have been in some pretty nasty environments and KNEW every day might be my last. Here at home however, I take for granted that at any time God may say "your done".

 I love the people in my life that mean the most to me. I can't help it. Love isn't a conditional thing for me... It is a profound, complex emotion that has no beginning middle or end. I survive every single day, but do I truly LIVE every day? I don't think any one out there can say they do unless they are suffering a terminal illness. How dare we wait until our lives are almost over to appreciate the value. Every day I would like to say that I learn something new. Even if it's just something about myself or someone close to me that I didn't know.

Finally, I think that if we spent more time saying "Thank you" and less time pining over the things we want that we DON'T HAVE we might be much happier. Each day, each breath is a gift. If you have a roof over your head, food in your belly, shoes on your feet, clothing on your back, A JOB a car.... we take SO MUCH for granted. We never appreciate what we have until it's taken away.

Today, I'm refusing to be this way. Today, I am going to live. After I post this, I'm going to go out and go for a walk in the sun. Maybe in the woods, maybe by the river, but I'm going for a walk in the sun. Because I can, because I'm not working myself crazy today. Because I don't have obligations that take me away from my ability to do so.

Thanks for Reading and good Luck !
Matthew