Life is hard. You're a liar if you say it's not.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014 @ 4:11 PM
I read today that Buddhists believe we have no right to expect happiness in this life; instead, it is best to view life as an endurance test with the aim being to get through it while causing as little hurt as possible to other people.
I like that. It can make you feel less of a failure, if you view life like that; less like you've made the wrong decisions in life - the idea that no chosen path would be easy, that the grass isn't greener.
Some people present their lives as though they were easy, however and this I find very unhelpful. Nigella Lawson was a case in point, with her fabulous staged dinner parties. Why couldn't I have that lovely life with the canapes, the champagne, the twinkling Christmas lights, mingling amongst my interesting and vivacious friends? (We later find out people were paid to to be her 'friends' and the filming was in a studio and not her house and she had a miserable marriage).
I've also had friends who do the Nigella thing. And because I can't stand all that posing I don't want to bother with them. If you can't have a genuine, honest connection with someone, why waste your time with them? One life and you spend it putting on an act and competing, trying to prove your lifestyle is better than that of others? So I've ended up a bit friendless; it may be a temporary or permanent state. Who knows? It may also be my inevitable fate as a full-time mother who focuses her energies on the family and thereby becomes a bit isolated.*
So I believe that life is difficult (for everyone) and those who pretend it isn't are liars.
And that concludes my thought of the day.
*I have to add that it has annoyed me no end this week to read more than one article written by women journalists - saying they 'prefer to work' rather than 'not work' - they define full-time mothers as 'non-workers', rather than unpaid workers. And yet childminders are workers? What a load of old-fashioned nonsense. They play right into the hands of the patriarchy when they put down other women's contributions in that insidious way.