On the Inside Looking Out

 

Have you ever felt this way?  Maybe you are sipping your coffee one morning and you are alone.  Sometimes it is just a feeling we may have.  Sitting in our home looking out into the world and thinking, what am I missing out there?  I think everyone feels like that sometimes. Like we are missing out on something. If you watch much TV or read many magazines you can really begin to feel this way.  What can we do to change that feeling?  Are there steps we can take to change the way we feel about anything at all?  I believe there is.  I have had days I felt like I am the Odd girl Out. I have felt this way even as a grown woman.

I remember when we lived in Plattsburg, New York, I was looking across the street at a party that was going on in someone’s garage.  It was not an amazing party or anything like that, but there were classmates there with a record player and I could hear Sarah Smiles by Hall and Oates. They looked like they were having so much fun.  All I could think about was how much I was missing out. My life was terrible and theirs was fantastic. My dad said something to me about the fact that things are not always as they appear,  but in my mind it seemed like I was really losing out.  Before you know it I had progressed to being a loser.

 

What in the world causes us to progress to such thoughts about ourselves and our lives.  I think that most of the time it is a moment in our lives where we get a little too self absorbed.  Maybe we spent a little too much time thinking about ourselves and not enough about the reality of the world around us.  Maybe we have spent too much time alone looking at our own situation or watching too much of the unrealistic life of people on Netflix.

 

I have found that a very good way to recover from this faulty way of thinking is to get out and do something for someone else.    Looking out on the world from our chair thinking everyone has it better than me is just not true.  Visit any nursing home or talk to most people on a personal level and you will find that everyone has some kind of personal crisis going on. They may not reveal it to you and you may not recognize it, but people have stuff going on.  Everyone does, and they don’t have anything going on now they will at some time, I promise.

 

If you still don’t believe me, just ask.  I have stuff going on, and I have been on the inside looking out before.  It really is a matter of perspective, and how we interpret  things. You can change the way you perceive things and you can certainly change how it affects you.

 

Go for a walk.  Think about the blessings you do have in your life, not the thing you don’t have in your life.  Think about the breath that was given to you today.  Love and honesty,  Janet