The Under-Qualified But Overly Opinionated Weirdo’s Guide To Finding Happiness When Life’s Lemons Bury You: Chapter 2
I could just be rambling and making no sense at all…. I always wonder when about this sort of thing when I write. Please understand that this is the very first draft and completely unedited.
Chapter 2
The Book is Always Better Than The Movie
Ever wonder why, with very few exceptions, the book is always better than the movie? The easiest explanation is that you’re comparing apples to oranges. Books are written to be read and enjoyed as a reading experience, and that’s hard to transfer to a different medium.
Imagine taking a painting and trying to turn it into a sculpture (or vice versa). Now, it might turn out to be absolutely spectacular (like those 3D interactive painting exhibits), but if you tried to make a masterpiece like The Mona Lisa in sculpture form, it might end up being pretty boring. That’s because what makes The Mona Lisa special is in every brush stroke, and that just wouldn’t translate well into a different form. You could say the same about a famous sculpture like The Thinker. It has been sketched and painted many times, but none of these reproductions can ever be as spectacular as the original. Why? Because there is a magic that happens when a lifeless hunk of rock is pounded down and chiseled into something so much life a living thing. These masterpieces are meant to be experienced in their original form. Nothing else will ever be as good.
It’s the same problem comparing movies to their books or books based on a movie—they’re just not fair comparisons.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why I just wasted 200 words on comparing art forms. It’s because, like everyone else on this planet, I repetitively fall into the trap of comparing my life and circumstances to other people.
Remember what I said before about cause and effect? There is no other person on that lives or has ever lived that has experienced the exact same set of circumstances, events, emotions, abilities, limitations, background, etc. that you have in the exact same way that you have experienced them. Some life stories are very similar, but the way our brains and bodies function, the order in which things happen to us, and the way we perceive and experience them, is unique to us. That means that no one can ever know exactly what you are thinking, feeling, or going through because you are the only you there is and the only you that ever will exist.
My story will sound very similar to someone else’s, but the subtle seen and unseen differences make all of the difference. Thus, comparing one life or experience to another will never be fair or accurate.
But the problem is, we learn and communicate through symbols and comparison. It’s hardwired into our brains. The letter “Z” has a distinct meaning and sound to us. The word “tomato” has a pretty simple definition. However cliché the comparison may be, “tomay-to” to me might be someone else’s “tomaaaa-to”. I was taught that “Z” is named “zee” while others are taught “zed”. Our backgrounds, upbringing, education, and experiences daily change the meaning of everything we see, hear, and experience. But there’s also a general understanding of most common symbols like languages so that we can communicate and interact with each other, so even if someone says “data” instead of “data”, I may cringe, but I’ll still understand what they mean by it.
We are taught to compare and judge—it’s a basic survival skill to know whether something is good or bad, safe or dangerous. We learn to walk and talk, learn and grow by watching others. We are, in so many ways, built to emulate and compare. It is only natural that the same habit continues into adulthood.
The problem is, these same behaviors and habits, can also kill you. That may sound dramatic, but, as you’ve probably heard “Comparison is the thief of joy”, and it is very difficult to stay alive as an extremely unhappy person. The hormones we need and the way our body functions just doesn’t support a life without joy. If our measure of success is based on meeting someone else’s baseline, it will never be very accurate.
The Lesson
I had a therapist once who always asked me if what I was doing, saying, or thinking was in alignment with my values. I thought it was a pretty dumb question because 1. I’m not a car, so this alignment stuff was nonsense. 2. I didn’t understand what she meant. That therapist and I never did work well together because we weren’t able to communicate effectively, but when I finally understood what she’d been trying to teach me, it helped a lot.
No matter how correct or incorrect, if we are not meeting whatever our values are, if we are not living life as we believe we should, acting as we believe we should, and meeting the goals we believe we should meet, we will not feel right. And I realized something: If I wanted to be happy, I had to take a hard look at my own values and figure out what wasn’t lining up. What did I believe (that I should or should not be doing) that was keeping me from feeling satisfied.
For example, if I believed that I should run 20 miles every day, but I didn’t have the physical ability to do so, I would never feel very good about myself. Or if wanted to be a good parent, but, in my mind, the definition of a “good” parent is someone who bakes pie from scratch everyday while keeping my house spotless, being CEO of a large company, making millions of dollars, and giving my children everything they could ever want for or dream of, there might be a few problems. Likewise, if believed I should always be honest but constantly lied, I would never be very happy.
What Do You Believe and Value?
Take a moment to think about that. What is it that you believe? What do are your values? Why don’t you feel like your best self?
We need to go back to that diagnosis process and look at cause and effect. That therapist was always asking me what it was that was out of alignment with my values.
I’m not exactly a car person, but I can tell you that I learned about alignment the hard way. Utah roads a notorious for being rough, and it’s recommended that you get your alignment done every six months here. Well, before I knew that, I had never paid to get my tires aligned. I thought that an alignment was part of a tire rotation. My tires also wore out significantly faster than average.
According to https://auto.howstuffworks.com/, car alignment is actually an elaborate process that brings the car’s suspension into its proper configuration, positioning and adjusting components so that wheels are aligned with one another and the road surface.
For those of us who don’t speak auto-mechanic, tires don’t always stay in direct, even contact with the road. As you drive, especially when things get bumpy, the tires end up getting tilted at a slight angle. For what I can tell, it’s not something obvious most of us can see. As you drive on a tire that’s misaligned, it wears out the outer edge of the tire instead of the thicker, more sturdy bottom of the tire. Alignment, squares things back up, and your tires’ tread wears more evenly over time.
After a particularly hard winter, my tires that were less than a year old were ruined. And I was livid. Before hearing the explanation, I thought the tires were defective. I thought it was something that should have been covered by the warranty. The mechanics treated me like I was an idiot because everyone should know about this basic tenant of car maintenance, but no one had ever explained it to me before.
Life is stressful, and if we are living in a state that is out of alignment with our values, we will wear out just like those tires.
At the time, I believed I should be able to financially provide for my family and not mooch off others. My kids and I should go to church every Sunday, read scriptures everyday together and individually, have prayer every morning and night together, etc. I should be able to keep my house clean and teach my kids how to clean and keep things clean. I should be able to get my kids to school on time everyday and provide any help and support with school they needed. This list goes on…
Most of these aren’t unreasonable. But they were unreasonable for my situation at that time and didn’t always match our family’s needs.
On morning, when I first saw my son, I asked him if he’d taken care of something he needed to do (because I cared about him and wanted to be sure this particular need was met and not forgotten). Instead of answering me, my eleven year old said something that changed my life. “Mom, you didn’t even tell me ‘good morning.’” And it broke my heart. I as devastated. There I was, working so hard to take car of my children, to be the kind of mom I thought they needed. But I was failing. What my children needed the most was for me to be there for them—to listen to them, love them, and let them know I cared.
Instead of aligning myself with the image I thought I should be comparing myself to—that surely everyone I met compared me to, I began to learn how to see the values and goals my family and I needed to work toward.
Can you imagine how different your life would be if, instead of comparing yourself to other people, you had understood what you value, were able to compare how you match up with those values, were patient with yourself and accepted that where you are right now is a temporary state, and recognized and celebrated your progress?
