Enjoying life: most of it's the incidental things

Every now and then I write a post for my daughter, for none of us know when our time is come.

Usually I put some of the limited wisdom I have gained over my years into it. And usually it is written more for my benefit than anyone else's - even hers. This time is no different.

I have found through life, as informed by experience and a period of intense Buddhist studies, that it is the little things that really enable happiness - or put up a brick wall between me and it.

Nothing new here, but worth stating anyway for the reasons above, if for no others.

What do I mean by the incidentals?

The little things. The incidental things. The chance meetings and encounters. The attitude we take into these encounters.

One of the biggest mistakes I make (still) is to adopt a self-righteous 'I am more important than you; my business is more important than yours,' attitude.

I can guarantee that whenever this horrible dark side of DrWom appears from my inner self, I am going to have a shit time. Vicious cycle time - and the worse the time I have, the more tempted the inner DrWom is to send forth the aggro Wom.

Round and round, until I reassert myself and humble up. Apologies, sincere or awkward. Usually both. And every time the words 'had a bad day' or whatever sound more and more hollow. Whose fault is that?

And it wouldn't give me the right to be a dickhead even if it wasn't my own fault in the first place.

Invariably I compare days like that to my good days. What's different?

A smile. A "how you going?" An acknowledgement that the world doesn't actually revolve around me, and an awareness that my happiness is actually, genuinely and totally, tied to that of the people around me.

And we have the power to effect both, positively or negatively. Hell, it's not even a power. It's just the way it is. If we're not proactive in the process, our inner DrWoms will do it for us, and in a way we and the world around us may not appreciate.

An important side note

So sometimes it's not actually our fault when things go wrong. Someone comes along and kills our happy buzz. Or worse (yes I know, there's much worse).

All I've got here is we should try to contain it within our own little worlds (I'm not as good as I could be at this). But try hard. Because each time we let our own aggro Wom out into the world, the little bugger can set off a spiralling web of bad vibes, ill-will and just plain destruction across our homes, neighbourhoods, and cities.

The guy on the bus doesn't need you to kill his happy buzz.

And you don't need him to kill yours.

And on that note, 😊 HAVE A HAPPY DAY!🙃

Photo by @DrWom

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