I had a fabulous weekend. I ate good food, dodged a treacherous camping trip, watched a movie, reconnected with old friends, and got new tires (finally, after 2 months)! However, I don’t know what was so special about this weekend, but I got to chat with so many different people and caught a glimpse into their lives. It’s crazy how different everyone’s lives are. What makes a person tick, what turns a person on, how a person operates or functions…it’s fascinating. I guess that’s why I pursued the human condition in university. I talked to a man who wanted for nothing from the material world but inside, was so desperately lonely. Wealth bought him an abundance of shiny things but no one to scuff them up with. He is afraid that no one really knows him or if they really even like him for him. Money intimidated those around him and no one would speak the truth and so to combat the loneliness, he shrouded himself with tiny monuments and pillars of gold. Another woman is sucking the precious marrow from her husbands bones and is laughing about it and from the outside, it all looked so sparkling. It was the American dream to desire. White picket fence, 2.5 kids, even a golf course for dad, a sports car for mom and an electric scooter for the littlest one. It wouldn’t be something (gorgeous show kitchen aside) I’d be so quick to cast into the gutter in my mid-30′s (there are children to consider!) but somehow, a youthful spirit that is free to roam like a nomad is what the mom is chasing after instead while the faces of her little ones dim by the minute. My school advisers always told me before I graduated that even if you’re qualified, it will always seem like a potential employer will ask to see that one thing you don’t have. Maybe life is like that. You’re fine, fine, fine, and then someone comes around and tells you that you’re lacking something and so spurs the pursuit of a standard of happiness that was arbitrarily set in the first place. Are people broken because they’re told by others or by themselves that the exclusion of one thing or another brings about unhappiness? Is it like the holy grail or philosopher’s stone? Does a unsuccessful scavenger hunt lead to brittle bones and ultimately lead to brokenness? Someone also told me this weekend that life was too long. I mean, I guess it could be? To me, it’s too short. No sense in chasing after a cup or a stone that may or may not be there, be happy with the gifts you’ve been given. To wish you were something else is squandering what you already are. Now, before you dub me as “too preachy,” consider this: there are days that are difficult for all of us, sometimes I can’t even leave the house because my anxiety is so gripping but you must take that first step (both figuratively and literally). Why dwell on unhappiness? Why not strive to be happy? I get messages all the time, some tinged with slight annoyance about how upbeat and perky I am. I’m no energizer bunny but to allow negativity to fester and bleed is to accept the invitation for your soul to begin to atrophy and eventually die. The movie I watched this weekend was Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, now you may watch it and think it’s crap or that it’s the best thing ever but for me, it was good. I certainly wasn’t regretting the purchase price of the ticket but wasn’t jumping up and down in my seat either but it did outline what one might do when faced with impending doom, i.e. the Apocalypse. Some people pillage and wreck havoc, others adopt a sudden hedonist lifestyle, others rock back and forth with regret and drown in tears…whether you believe in God or an afterlife, wouldn’t you want to spend your last moments with the people you love? Even if imminent death isn’t present, why shouldn’t you live life like that? The sex and drugs I get, even the sobs, but the pillaging I don’t so why pillage your own life (in a sense). The joker said, “some men just want to watch the world burn.” Now really, where’s the sense in that? It’s true but completely nonsensical in my book. Burn it all and you have nothing left. Friend #1 has no one to love, friend #2 wants to push away those that do love her, in either case, it isn’t a Ferrari nor is it a new found sense of youth that matters in the end so stop stressing, my friends and enjoy the gifts you have and the people in your life because this little Squishy Monster really believes that’s what matters most.