Life Sucks and Then You Die!

When I was in my rebellious phase, my mantra was, “Life Sucks and Then You Die!” Yes, it was total teenage angst. And because I was so negative, I gave up a lot on things I tried. Anytime life didn’t meet the picture I had in my head, I was disappointed. I could get 90 % of what I wanted, but the missing 10 % would send me into a tailspin of depression and recrimination. It took me a long time to learn how to enjoy the good parts and laugh, eventually, about the bad ones.
Yes, life is full of unexpected twists and turns, and it’s not always pretty. However, today, I have a much more positive mantra now. It’s a quote by George Santayana.

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.”

For me, the foundation of resilience is accepting life and seeing there is beauty in it. You may not like your circumstances, and you have the right to change them. But life is about taking the good with the bad.
If you can accept that life is full of success and failure, happiness and sadness, ugliness and beauty; that nothing is promised and time is short. Then you can face life each day as a new adventure.

Fairytales and Hollywood movies have given us the expectation that we will live happily ever after. And when things don’t turn out that way, we think we have failed. But fairytales and movies are fantasies.

Learn to accept the good times and the bad as part of the journey you are on and allow them to inspire you to new possibilities.