Does being miserable make your ass look fat?
by Mira and Charles on December 17th, 2009There is nothing more common to the human condition than to be unhappy and not know why. Nothing is more common, and nothing is more dangerous: it is out of that nameless misery that a thousand demons fly.
This was brought to mind be a recent Stanley Crouch column in the Daily Beast. It was about Solange Magnano, a 38-year-old former Miss
This is not about attacking plastic surgery, which can be a blessing and a miracle. It’s about the way we are so often miserable and we don’t really know why—even if we think we do—and we flail around and lite on the first innocent object of our misery that strikes our eye. It could be the living room furniture which suddenly looks drab. A marriage which turns out to take work. Or an ass that’s too big, or too small, or too something.
It’s an easy silly game. We’re unhappy, life if full of imperfections, and so just by opening our eyes we see countless things we’re sure would make us happy if only we changed them.
But here’s the truth. Six months (or six days or six minutes) after you get the new ass, or the new boyfriend or girlfriend, or the new house, or whatever…guess what? You’re back to your previous state of misery. Of course you remember the boost you got, so you look for another boost, another mindless rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic of your life that you’re sure this time will make everything all better. And then six months later…
All these quick fixes: they’re not a solution to your misery. They’re a prescription for misery. There may be a whole in your life, but they will just make it bigger.
The solution lies in focusing on the real problem. And I guarantee it’s not your ass. The world may be a sad place because it makes you feel there’s something wrong with the size of your ass or the color of your couch or the fact that your gizmo is one G behind the latest gizmo’s G (that’s one G spot that will never be satisfied for long), but this isn’t why you’re sad.
So if it’s not your ass, what is it?
One possibility is that you don’t know what you want. So what you need is to find what you really want in your heart of hearts. Take the time to explore that. What have you always wanted to do? What could give you the kind of happiness that could never be taken away from you? Spend some time talking with a best friend or a therapist about this. It might seem odd to spend time to uncover a desire, but if it’s your heart’s desire then it and only it will give you lasting happiness instead of a risky temporary high. We’ve done that a lot with people here at The Chestnut Hill Institute, and it can be totally transformative.
Another possibility is that you are really OK and you just don’t realize it. Oh, yeah. Here’s what we wrote about that in a previous blog. Check it out. It’s a lot cheaper than a new ass.
Maybe you are just running low on vitamin EE. I’m talking about Emotional Energy. There are a lot of reasons why our emotional energy runs low. The key is being specific. So how do you discover exactly why your emotional energy is running low? Well, that’s what we help you do in The Emotional Energy Factor. You’d be amazed at how easy it can be to give yourself an emotional energy boost, if you know what to do.
Finally, maybe there’s not enough meaning in your life. And believe me, the most perfect ass in the world won’t make you feel your life has meaning. But what could help lies within the covers of Everything Happens for a Reason: Finding the True Meaning of the Events of Your Life. Yes, there you will find the meaning of your life.
So please: stop being stuck in misery. Stop flailing about. There’s plenty of help right here to send you in the right direction.
