Friday Things // 05.05.2023
The one about choosing the silver lining.
After I lost my mom 2.5 years ago, I kept trying to figure out why. What the reason was that such a horrible thing had happened. To me. To her. To anyone who cared about her. I desperately wanted to make sense of it, and felt like it was ultimately too unfair to believe my mom had simply drawn a short straw in life; she hadn’t deserved to die the way she had, never mind when she had, and I wanted to understand why I’d deserved to lose her so early. No matter how many times I turned it over in my head, it didn’t make sense. I couldn’t find a way to spin it to make it seem justified.
I’ve always been a sprinkles on top sort of person, trying to pull the lesson out of every challenging situation, so this baffled me. There had to be a reason, didn’t there? Something good to emerge from this tragedy in my life. Something for me to learn to make the trauma and timing seem necessary. But… there wasn’t. Still isn’t. I still vividly remember the therapist/grief counselor I was seeing at the time telling me I needed to free myself of trying to pull something good out of something awful; that sometimes, bad things happen and there is not actually some enlightened, teachable moment for us to celebrate. Sometimes, things do just stink, and you don’t have to force yourself to find the thing that made it *worth it.* I had a really hard time wrapping my brain around that at the time, and it felt sort of… dark. It wasn’t the reality I wanted to be true.
I sort of adapted that new mindset for the last few years. I was still mostly optimistic but I stopped trying to find an altruistic ulterior motive to things or a hidden gem of a takeaway to make the lousy things happening (in my life, in the world at large) seem OK. Earlier this week, though, as I thought about all the stuff breaking lately in my little corner of the world (which are extremely minor compared to the atrocities and heartbreak happening around this country and the world on a regular basis), and I realized that actually, I still want to be that person who believes there’s a reason for the sh*t that happens to us — or at least most of it. Maybe some of it will never have a good reason — a reason to make anything (like the horrifyingly regular mass shootings we’ve been experiencing in the U.S. or my mom dying in the middle of a pandemic) — justified.
I am not always someone who is comfortable in ambiguity, or who sits easily in the grey. I like to know things are certain or at least clear, that they have facts or a solid plan forward. It’s been trippy to then consider there could be a both sort of situation here, i.e., that sometimes, there is no golden lesson, but other times — and maybe, perhaps more often — there is one, if you look hard enough. Two things can be true at once — I know that, and yet sometimes it’s easy to forget the world is not purely black and white, good or bad.
And so, on that note, I started a new thing this week. An attempt to readjust my mindset back to seeing the good and not getting lost in the broken bits (or distracted by the conveyor belt that has become life — get up, workout, answer a billion emails + join work call after work call, eat, sleep, repeat. Completely inspired by this podcast episode, I have started to force myself to find at least one thing each day that absolutely does not suck. A chocolate muffin I had as a snack, a dinner date with an old friend, puffy clouds in the sky… whatever. Just something good and that I can use to ground myself in gratitude. My yay list, if you will. Something to remind me that there’s plenty of goodness around (because there is!), and plenty of joy that exists even in the mundane, and even amidst the struggle. Joy will always outweigh the grumpy, falling apart feelings if we give them a chance. I’m planning to keep this yay list going at least through the end of May… let me know if you want to join. 🤠
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I highly suggest listening to that podcast episode linked above if you need a little boost today.🧡
BTW: I also would be remiss not to point out that while I do very much believe there’s reasons to be joyful and grateful everyday, everywhere, there are and maybe always will be crummy and also downright horrific things that happen. There can be both, and we don’t have to make sense of it or find a silver lining in something like a school shooting… some stuff is just straightforward awful and senseless. On that note, if you’re looking for a good follow on Instagram and also a way to get more involved in creating positive change in the U.S. (because positive thoughts can’t succeed alone), I’m loving this new account by
.Have a great weekend!
Thanks for reading,
Joelle
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I’ll participate in the “Yay List.” Life in So. Cal has been a bit dreary/wet the past six months. (First world problems, I know) However, I could do with acknowledging the little everyday things that are wins!