Happiness is a choice

I was thinking about happiness today... about how I've been very up and down when it comes to my own happiness lately.

Tonight I realized something. I'm quite certain I've discovered this piece of information before but maybe it just sunk in tonight.

Happiness is really about choosing to be happy. Fear is really about choosing to be afraid. Anger is really about choosing to be angry.

Every emotion is a choice.

I've had a lot of different emotions recently.

• Uselessness for not having a "real" job. My attitude towards being a stay-at-home-mom really needs adjustment. Being here with my wee one is extremely important. Raising the wee one myself and not paying someone to do it for me is important to me, baby, and my husband.
  
• Sad about being stuck in a military town that I don't really like. It doesn't really resemble home in any way and I don't have any friends here. I'm kind of a home-body and I just like hanging out with the wee one.
  
• Excited about the prospect of moving soon. 

Lately I've thought a lot about homeschooling the wee one. I have been reading homeschooling handbooks. The more I learn about it, the more I really think I can do it... and the more I think I really do want to do it. I know that if I do choose to do this, I'll have to be on my game, and I'll have to resign myself to not working outside of the home. I doubt I'll ever go back to being a nurse again--and the more I pursue this path for my wee one, the more I realize that it will be very difficult for me to go back to school for my BSN myself.

With that said, I'm going to start being happy. Because I deserve to be happy for myself and with my life, my wee one deserves to have a happy mother, and my husband deserves a happy wife. I've made this decision; it's an important one.

Let's pretend we won't die

Maybe I've been out of the "TV World" for too long. My husband and I haven't had cable TV for... 6 years? We have satisfied our need for television with Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon prime over the years. For a long time we didn't even have a TV. We just had a projector that we'd set up if we wanted to watch something and play it on the blank wall in our house. Now we have a huge TV and sound system. It's nice. But even with this big TV and nice sound system, some days I don't watch it at all.

Anyway, as I was saying, I've been out of the TV World for a long time--so long that I feel like I've awakened.

I see Lemmings..... *says in scared voice with frosty breath* They're everywhere.

Occasionally I'll catch a Youtube video with an ad on it in the beginning because of the video's popularity. When I see ads now, I really think about them. Not in a "I want that product/service" kind of way. I think about WHY they're there. I think about the world as it relates to the ad... and how the ad relates to the world. And I've come to a few conclusions

1. Advertisers don't want us to think about death or dying. 
2. Expounding on my first point, they always use young, healthy, "beautiful," and fit people to really drive this point home. Life is awesome if you're young and beautiful, right?!
3. Advertisers are training people to think they need to constantly improve themselves to conform to society. This really makes sense, of course. It wouldn't be effective if their product didn't make you want to buy it. But I think this goes deeper than that. It touches a subconscious nerve that people don't even realize is there. 
4. They're distracting from what's *really* going on in the world. There is so much to distract us today. 

I'm not saying I'm this enlightened being that knows everything. I'm sure there are blinders that have been pulled over my eyes in some areas of my life. But some commercials are so obviously distractions (at least to me) from death/dying/aging that it is disturbing. Do people really think they aren't going to die? 

It always amazed me that people paid for cable service in which they are bombarded every 5 minutes with commercials. What a racket is that!! If you're going to watch TV, watch it without the commercials. In a 30 minute program you get 9 or 10 minutes of commercials now, right? Plus commercials in-between shows, too. And the commercials last 3-5 minutes, too. Annoying! 

I would love to be 10 years younger for just one day, my more naive and innocent self, able to go on living life and have nothing to worry about. There's nothing like having a child to really solidify your place in the world--to really make your mortality real. Now it's real. Now it's THERE. 

I almost envy the ignorance of youth. I'm not old by any stretch. But I'm not 18 anymore, either. Wouldn't that be nice, though? 

Just think of all of these distractions in your life as the Buddha's father. Buddha's father wanted to shield the Shayamani Buddha from all of the painful realities of the world by over-indulging him in harems and all of the pleasures of the world. When the Buddha would go outside of the gates of his home his father would order all of the old, sick, dying, and disabled people off of the streets so the Buddha would not see them. But this was a false world that his father had created for him.

I won't tell you the whole story of the Buddha. If you haven't read it, you should definitely read it for yourself. And I highly, highly recommend the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Please, read it!!

So, maybe you should kill your TV, too. Maybe you'll understand what I'm talking about with all of this then. In the meantime, if you're happy with your ignorance, I suppose the only thing to do would be to find out how much happier you'd be if you were awake. TV is an addiction that must be squelched. Get rid of the cable company... this intrusive, time-wasting commercial-touting liar that you've allowed into your home.