The right thing

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm doing, thinking and feeling, lately. I wonder if it's right.

When something happens that I don't like, when I feel crappy or angry, I stop and deliberately think, "Why do I feel this way? Why am I doing this?"

I ask "why" and "why" and "why" of myself multiple times until I get down the real reasons.

Why do I do this?

Because I was unhappy and I didn't want to be. I have a perfectly great life and yet I was unhappy. I decided there was a way to be happy, no matter what my situation was.


"The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem." It's a quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I'm reading. And a quote from Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean.

For a while, I just asked "why" and in some cases stopped reacting, outwardly. Lately, I've been experimenting with different courses of action. I suppose even not reacting outwardly is one type of action that I experimented with. It worked for a time because I was preoccupied with the idea that I didn't know what I should do, what would be the right way to act.

Lately, I've been thinking that maybe there's not a right way. Maybe there are just different ways. Clearly, my old reactions weren't working out for me. So I wanted a change.

Today I tried this one on: "I'm mad and there's nothing I can do about the thing I'm mad about and I would like to not be mad about it, but I am." Out loud. To the person I was mad at. I explained what I was mad about, in a non-yelling way. And then I stopped and moved on to writing this post, savouring how the whole thing felt.

And now I'm trying to leave it at that - let it go. It's feeling a little uncomfortable. But if I stop kidding myself, I realize that not reacting was fairly dishonest. For one thing, that in itself was a reaction. For another, I was reacting - I'm not good at hiding my feelings. I was instead just being weird and building up bitterness and not really letting it go.

Right now, I'm thinking about why I feel this way. My feelings are valid, even if I'd prefer not to be mad. They are not right or wrong, and my actions are not right or wrong - they just felt honest and fair. Maybe I just needed to get them out, have my feelings be known, before I could let them go. Maybe now I can move on.

We'll see.