Pages

Thursday, February 07, 2013

Ones and Zeroes

"It's not a straight trade. You don't get to trade your shortcomings for someone else's best assets. It's a package deal. It's the full suite, or it's nothing. Thinking about jealousy in that way was one of the healthiest decisions of my life. It turns petty jealousy into nothing, and it turns real jealousy into genuine awe."
- Daniel O'Brien, 4 Difficult Ways to Simplify Your Life (That Are Worth It)

People shouldn't really be taking life lessons from a comedy website, but some things just make so much sense that sometimes they get stuck to you on your way out.

Sometimes it's hard to wrap my head around the concept of people being the sum total of their experiences in life. It's easy to be envious of someone you don't really know, especially if what they show publicly makes it seem that they have it easy in life.

As I've written posts about time and again, this is often not the case - everyone has their own share problems and others are just better at hiding (or ignoring) them than others.

I guess when it comes down to it, all-or-nothing point of view is an interesting perspective. It reminds us that people's perks (sorry for the video game term) often compensate for their flaws, and that this is often how life deals its deck - everyone has good cards, bad cards and horrible cards and it's up to them to come up with the best way to play them. There will always be bad days and accepting that fact is probably the key to appreciating the good ones.

In this sense, I guess the article is right. It's easier to be happy with what one has in life when you consider every quality others have (instead of just the positive ones) and decide that some of them aren't exactly worth the price of admission while others are worth it - wrinkles and all (forgive the cheese).

As food for thought, isn't it nice that this all-or-nothing approach applies to the people one chooses to be around with?

No comments:

Post a Comment