Thoughts of an open mind under a lazy sky

This past week I went camping with a bunch of friends and did a lot of hiking. Needless to say I had a lot of time to think about my life and where I’m heading. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to present my real self to the world. I really hate when I let a situation control the way I act. Especially, when I leave my natural character behind to form a person contradicts my inner most beliefs. Talk about cognitive dissonance. It’s a war with myself every single day. Even though I fail a lot of the time, I feel that the battle is always worth it.

In the past few months I feel like I have become more comfortable with expressing emotions and needs (something that I have always been scared of doing). Through going through undesirable experiences, my whole perspective on human suffering has changed. I used to feel that people could control what happened to them in their lives. Or that by approaching a situation with a certain attitude people could feel good all of the time, but these things are not necessarily true. The fact is, sometimes you can do all you can do and still feel completely lost and sad. I think by personally experiencing these feelings, I have much more empathy for the person who is struggling.

We all struggle and hide our sadness, but how much better would our friendships be if they were open. I feel that if I was not able to reach out to my friends in my time of need things in my life could have become really bad. My recent experiences have taught me to be open and know its ok to feel sad and conflicted sometimes. For me this realization was life changing. Its funny, we can have people who have been around us for years and not trust them with our feelings and weaknesses. If we cant trust our friends with our feelings, why are they our friends? I learned that part of being honest with yourself and others is to admit when things are not alright. For me this is the biggest battle in my life and I struggle with it every day.  To my true friends, publicly I thank you for the many long phone calls and love. Those things have made a huge difference in my life. Anyways, I’m getting off my soapbox and moving on the other aspects of my life.

Much love

Jake