Ever been to one of those yogurt shops where you can select the flavour that you want (plain, blueberry etc) and the ingredients to go along with it? (Aloe Vera cubes, pumpkin seeds etc).
Then, voilà! You got your very own customized yogurt and you’re happy. At last, you don’t have to buy those yogurts in the supermarkets where they mix one of your favorite flavors with another one that you don’t like (what’s with mango and banana?).
That can be said about your happiness. You actually decide what goes into this thing called happiness. You decide what it consists of, and what doesn’t. Some people say you just can’t leave some people or items out like how you leave out the pomegranate seeds.
That is already choosing. You decided someone or something is too important and you just have to include them. Sure, you may not like pomegranate seeds but you think they’re essential so they will be found in your yogurt.
We all want our cake and eat it. No one says you can’t do that. But you still have to choose the flavour of your cake. So you love both chocolate and strawberry and must have both of them. So what will your cake look like? Is chocolate going to be the coating or strawberry? Or you want to mix both and have that mixed look and coating? Sure, if you like that. Why not?
The problem could start when you decide to share your cake with others. You think you’ve got the best cake ever – after all, it consists of both your favorite flavors so it can’t go wrong. But someone tastes it and expresses disgust, and another says it tastes “weird”. But you get others who just swallow the cake quietly.
So you decide to make another cake but it’s going to be chocolate this time because chocolate seems to be the safest flavour and everyone loves chocolate, don’t they?
They did. But now they don’t. Now they think vanilla cake is the best thing ever. So they eat your cake and think you don’t have any originality, that chocolate is so over-done and that you should do vanilla instead.
So you tried to make vanilla this time. But you can’t quite get that lemony vanilla flavour that’s selling well at top bakeries and again, the people who criticized you yet you still insist on impressing them are belittling you once more. “This vanilla flavour is too strong but ok at least you got the right flavour this time. But now it’s not just about vanilla; it’s about milky vanilla.
When you look at your precious time, you realized you have spent a chunk of it pleasing people who prefer to criticize and judge you instead. You’re so desperate for their love and affection that the worse they treat you, the more you do to please them because you don’t have your own identity. They do. They have their own and keep to their own, while watching you attempting to be a part of the identity that they have created for themselves.
So, what are you to do? You know what you have to do, you know what you want to do, but you are worried about the consequences of your decisions.
You are afraid of making the “wrong decision” or a decision with after effects that you think you cannot handle.
While diving straight into a shark-infested sea does not sound brilliant, ask yourself why. Have you weighed the possible outcomes and thought about what you could do when they happen? If you don’t want to think about it or prefer to convince yourself that there’s nothing you can do to make things better, then that is your decision. So when you don’t get what you want, what will you do about it?
It’s great to be optimistic and hopeful for positive outcomes. But good things don’t happen to good people just because they “resign to their fates”. If you’re taking the backseat to your life and happiness, then you’re just going to get whatever comes your way.
If that’s enough to make you happy, that’s great for you, or is it not?