When I woke up this morning, it was to the annoying attack of my alarm clock. Sluggishly, I stumbled across the room to turn it off. Then I crawled back under the covers for another half hour-- NOT ready for whatever was going on today. I honestly feel like my brain takes a full hour to wake up and so when my eyes slit open, there’s not a whole lot going on behind them. I just needed to put some clothes on, brush through my hair, and brush my teeth at the least, before I headed to school. I went to bed late, had to get up early for school, and was not feeling pretty good about my day. Like really, this isn’t even my day, but just a day.
My mom has told me multiple times that the first thing to do when you open your eyes in the morning is to choose how you’re going to feel and smile at the ceiling. Just like the law of relativity, which means that nothing is fundamentally good or bad, I get to choose how I’m going to start my day!
Choosing my emotions gives me freedom in life. Nothing that anyone says or does can force me to feel something. Nothing that happens can make me do anything against my will. Nothing that gets put in my way can rain on my parade. Well, okay actually the rain could come because that is something outside my control. But guess what, I can enjoy that rain and let it roll off my back. I could choose to be frustrated, but the rain isn’t making me mad, it’s really me!
I find it funny how in almost every movie, book, or just story, it starts raining right at the sad, depressing part. I mean it really does do a great job of setting the mood! I know I have had many days where I just start off on the wrong foot, and just the day drags on. When I finally leave school and it’s pouring, I just feel, “Ugh.” I want to go take a nap and just collapse. It feels like the rain is pummeling me down with every drop.
In contrast, there was a certain day in particular, when I was quite a bit younger and the rain was coming down fairly hard. But in my head, I had the switch flipped to where I saw the green grass glistening and growing with every taste of rainwater. I could smell the raindrop’s welcome to the dusty air. It was beckoning me into the clean fresh world. So in my purple skirt, I walked through the doors, popped open my umbrella that was as big as me… and dashed out onto the trampoline! There I jumped and jumped, losing the umbrella and ending up joyfully soaked through!
Although these days were fairly similar in circumstance, there is a difference. My experience was different. One day the rain was gloomy with gray clouds, and the other day it was a welcoming, wet party! And what made that difference? How I chose to see it! I had made this unconscious switch in my mind throughout the day that I was either going to feel great or going to feel gloomy. It’s all about my perspective on my life!
"splash" by Scooter Lowrimore is licensed with CC BY 2.0.
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From now on, I think I’m gonna choose to put on my rain boots and jacket and put a smile on my face because nothing that happens to me is a weight pulling and dragging me down. Only I have the power to choose to frown… or smile. It’s my body, my mind. So tomorrow when I wake up, I’m going to try and remember to tell myself that it is MY day! I am lucky enough to know that I determine how I feel regardless of what I experience every day. With the law of relativity, the quote by Alice Earl, “Every day may not be good, but there is good in every day,” is true. We might have hard things in our day, but we can decide to still have a good day and make it OUR DAY.
Emma
Perspective is everything! Have you ever felt like no matter what you do you can't seem to shift that perspective? What would you say to that person in regard to relativity? How can we validate our gloomy feelings as being acceptable while still trying to push ourselves to better ways?
ReplyDeleteI think that all of our feelings are valuable and that includes our down times. Life does throw us times when we seem to get stuck in the rut. That's certainly the rhythm of life! But if we look back on those times, do we remember only the negativity or do we see how we've climbed higher because of that? I find that relativity doesn't just work in the moment, it happens afterwards as well!
DeleteAlthough at that time we may just feel that we're pounding our head against a brick wall, just try to keep going. We can use relativity when looking back afterwards. Just don't dwell too much on feeling low that you can't get out of that feeling. You can accept that emotion and then just try to keep putting your feet in front of you, even if you have to take some breaks. It's not going to be possible to be happy all the time, because we're human, but we just need to try our best!