Today has been a good day for the most part. I am content for the first time in a long time. I love the fact that I am getting the opportunity to love, grow, and build a solid relationship with someone I love dearly. Someone who makes me better every day. Every day she is there for me, encouraging me, and supporting me. Very few people find someone that amazing this early in life. She makes life beautiful. Her smile lights up the room. I love making her smile. So, so much. I can only hope that I get to spend the rest of my life with her. Life offers no guarantees. No assurance that in 3 years she will be here, or even that I will be here.
This perspective, while disheartening to a chronic optimist, is real. And very true. But it introduces a new perspective for the self-aware anxious individual. That perspective being the appreciation of the temporary nature of life. If I really sit down and journal/process this dichotomy, I realize that I have two decisions here. 1) Spend my time with her (however infinite or limited it may be) worrying about what could happen. Or 2) Enjoying and appreciating and fully experiencing every moment I get to spend with her.
The first one takes me away from my time with her. If it is so uncountably finite, why would I spend it in a way that leaves me hurting and suffering when the option to enjoy our existence together is right there. Beckoning. The decision is so obvious on the surface. It’s clear to anyone with even half a brain. Life is finite. My time with her is finite. I want to spend every moment fully immersed in the experience of her.
That would require me to sit with my emotions. To fully experience her, I have to understand that I need to fully experience the emotions I feel when I am with her, when I am away from her, and when I am struggling with anxiety from my attachment style. By allowing myself to fully experience this, I can not only 1) fully appreciate the quality moments I spend with her, and 2) experience joy. Joy being defined as the realization that life is simple an aggregation of ups and downs. It requires the downs to provide the perspective to fully appreciate and experience the ups.
Joy is finding yourself outside of the ups and downs. It is knowing that every emotion is temporary and will usually pass in time. It is recognizing that you have a choice in how you experience those emotions. It is realizing that emotions are not bad, and they are simply a way of your brain and body trying to communicate with you. By detaching yourself from your emotions, it allows you to fully experience them as an observer. This lets you be able to fully understand what your body is trying to communicate to you, and it lets you live a more harmonious life with yourself. One of self-compassion.
Allowing yourself to go through this process, allows you to be fully content. Knowing that the bad is temporary, time is finite, and anxiety can be quelled so that you can fully experience the good. Whether is quality time with someone you love, or it is a full appreciation of yourself as a human being.