Some of you may know that I play guitar (poorly). I have a beautiful little Seagull guitar that I absolutely love. She's my baby. And as I type this, I am reminded of the pain she sometimes gives me when I don't pick her up for awhile. My fingers are sore, but it all has to do with the song I wrote last night.
The song is about struggling, which everyone is familiar with. I'm not going to focus this blog about the song, but rather the subject of the song.
I get annoyed very easily with people who seem to do stupid things. This is something I don't really like about myself. I wish I had more patience and empathy but I simply don't. It's something I'm working on. So something I try to focus on is the fact that everyone has problems. Everyone. No one is exempt from having issues. When I see someone doing or saying something that seems absolutely dumb to me, I try to think of why they might think/do that; I remind myself that people haven't had the experiences I have had and so they don't necessarily have the knowledge base that I have. Like when I was explaining to someone that it's not daylight all the time, year round, in Alaska; they thought it was. I explained to them that it wasn't.
On the flip side of that, I also try to remind myself that I also haven't had their life experiences; I don't know where everyone is coming from. This is something I struggle with; the empathy part. Especially when driving. My patience is thin when I'm driving and I'm kind of tired of bad driving etiquette. But what I have to remind myself is that people aren't necessarily "out to get me" or anyone else on the road (although you'll see in the news that that is not always the case either! Ha!). So I breathe deeply and try to focus on what I'm doing and not what they're doing.
Long story short, it's important to focus on the fact that a) we don't all share the same life experiences so we henceforth experience life at different levels and that b) the different ways in which we experience life bear no weight on struggling more or less than someone else.
We all struggle; we all have problems. It's part of this little game we play called being human. It's important to respect other people's struggles and not compare your own. Sometimes it's difficult, but it's very important. Comparison makes the struggle harder and we lose focus on getting through whatever it is we're dealing with. Keep a clear head and focus on the task at hand and remember that we all have ups and downs and we are all playing the same game.
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