Is this heaven...or is this hell?

Dearest reader, I'm going to let you in on a secret. You've probably worked out that I love to write. I just adore it. There is more going on in my head than I can possibly get out into the world on a given day, and this medium is wonderfully therapeutic. But the one part of it I hate is titles. They're supposed to be snappy and grab your attention, while tying into the subject matter. My mind just goes blank when it comes time to title a blog. So you can perhaps imagine my joy when I fired up iTunes as I sat down to write what your about to read and CHVRCHES' "Heaven/Hell" came on. Because that's what I want to ask you today. Is this heaven, or is this hell? Only you have the answer.


Allow me present you with a couple of lists of 'facts' about me and my life:

We'll call this one 'Hell'. 

• I'm 34 years of age and my 'youth' is behind me, that's kind of sad.
• I have two mortgages dangling over my head and I will for a long, long time to come.
• I work part time and we don't earn a huge amount of money. 
• I do the same job now I did 13 years ago & there are parts of it that I don't enjoy.
• I have two kids. They require a huge & consistent financial, emotional, physical and mental investment. They are a huge responsibility and they often stress/worry me.
• I am overweight. Apparently I should be less than 13 stone to be a 'healthy' weight and I've never been that low in my adult life.
• I see hair in the drain after I shower sometimes and I am petrified of going bald.
• I play football and in spite of my best efforts, I can't pass or shoot particularly well.
• It's bloody hard work being a Liverpool fan.

And this one...we'll call 'Heaven':

• I'm 34 years young. I still have most of my life ahead of me, that's kind of cool.
• I own two properties. Once they're paid off, I'll have a home & I'll have a pension.
• I work part time and we have plenty of money for all we want & need.
• I enjoy the majority of my working days, and I like the people I work with.
• I have two kids. They provide me consistent joy, happiness, laughter & wonderment. They are a huge responsibility which I embrace, & they're the best thing that ever happened to me. 
• I've lost more than 2 stone in a year and I'm still losing weight. I'm happy with how I feel & look. 
• I have plenty of hair and if & when the day comes that I don't, it's just fucking hair. 
• I'm not great going forward in football, but I defend & keep goal as well as anyone.
• Actually, it really is bloody hard work being a Liverpool fan. However, it's also wonderfully fun.

So, can we all see what I did here? This is my life. Framed through different viewpoints, looked at through different lenses. Glass half empty/glass half full. Heaven/Hell.

It took me about 15 minutes to write the first list. It took me about 2 minutes to write the second. Because I just don't look at my life negatively anymore. I don't know what purpose that would serve me, what value there is in that. Ten years ago, I would have been the reverse. But I became aware in my twenties that the phrase "life is what you make of it" contains untold wisdom. The truth is that life is 10% what happens and 90% what you do with it. If you walk through it insisting you're a victim and stubbornly holding on to the idea you've been hard done by, you'll always find a way to see the circumstances life presents through that lens, and you'll always be unhappy. If you choose the reverse, the same thing rings true and you'll be happier. 

Yesterday, I had what I would best characterise as a "run-in" with someone I used to be close with. We were having surface level small talk, safe conversation, the type you engage in when you have no desire to talk about anything real. Suddenly, this person launched at me. They tried to engage me in conversation about a years old argument, insisting I was an unhappy person and framing their attack as some type of myopic concern for my mental health, imagining me to be this angry soul. I don't wish to get into details about who it was or what they said because my intention here is not to embarrass anyone. But it just made me feel so utterly sad, so empathetic. Here we were on a nice day, beautiful surroundings, kids running about, and this person couldn't be there. They were in their head, in a different time, in a different place, grinding an axe about things that ceased to matter a long time ago, and incapable of being honest about why. 

It made me so palpably and tangibly aware of this incredible life I inhabit, & how lucky I am and how I've been intending for weeks to somehow express that here. If you've read my blogs before then you know all you need to about my life. If you're new here - welcome! - I live a simple life. I am married to a beautiful, kind, thoughtful, selfless woman, I'm privileged to be father to two daughters - one bursting with life & expression, one filled with contentment and joy, both gorgeous soft souls who are fascinated by the world they learn more about each day. My life is about the people in it so even if I stopped there I would feel like a rich man, but my best friends Paul & Dave are, to borrow a tacky phrase, solid gold mates, two of the best men you could ever hope to meet - and I use the term MEN with meaning. My siblings and I have good friendships, I have wonderful cousins scattered all across the world and have just been blessed by the company of my fabulous cousin Camille, one of my absolute fav people in the world, & her kickass lil' dude Oliver for the past few days. My US family are my 2nd Mom, Sis & Dad, and my in-laws are warm, helpful, loving and supportive in equal measures. I really enjoy the interactions I have with all my colleagues in work, they make what can be a laborious day at times fly by (GOBBLE GOBBLE! About 5 people will get that one...). And my extended network of friends - Neill, Noel, Shaun, Ciaran, Brian, Jen, Jane, Suse etc - are the most brilliantly diverse, different but good hearted and genuine people you could want to know. 

Setting all that aside and getting back to when it's just me and the man in the mirror - I have for as long as I can remember felt a certain sense of felt torture - a discomfort, a lack of ease with myself and who I am or was at any given time. To say I felt tortured is a big statement but truthfully it's accurate. I was haunted so long by the ghosts of my youth, which married to my addictive personality and a propensity to want to escape often made life a chore. Years and years of looking inward, two fantastic therapists in Tina & Erin, and support from every single person named above and many more brought me to this place. I have expressed this to several people of late and it's a new expression, even for someone who never has a feeling he doesn't tell the world, so here goes: I'm just so bloody content. Really. I just feel happy.

An undercurrent of happiness just runs through me this past 3 or 4 months, whatever the situation. I don't want or need anything in my life that I don't have. Life is perfect. I can be in this day, in this moment and just be happy. Everything that went before - my parents ugly split, Dad's accident, the horrible feeling of growing up in that environment, Dad's death, problems with drinking, toxic relationships - I am at peace with all of it. This is not to pretend none of it is a source of emotion for me, of course many of these can stir feelings inside me. But there is no confusion, no angst, no present day pain, anger or sorrow. It happened. It was hard. It took me forever to understand how it impacted me then and how it still affects me now. A year ago when MT & I were doing our big 30 day detox and I was blogging felt like the zenith of much of this torture. I blogged & blogged & blogged. I wrote about the sensation that my past was like a big, heavy bag of rocks I had been carrying around on my back forever and that could be crushing, suffocating, and expressed a need to just put it down. Today I am proud and happy to tell you that bag has not just been set down, but those rocks are gone. I close my eyes and picture myself looking at them scattered on some idyllic lake, thinking 'You served your purpose, but I don't need you anymore'. 

That 'run-in' yesterday touched off all that, but it made me ponder what I view as unnecessary suffering that I am often aware of around me. Not just on behalf of this person, for whom I just hope they can let go of the past and move forward. For everyone. I am so uncomfortably aware of the mental misery people impose on themselves by framing things as I did in that first list up there, in 'Hell'. I see it everywhere. Work is a place that brings about the worst in people and given most of us have a job, it's the place I urge anyone to look at first when trying to put a more balanced viewpoint & positive spin on their lives. I have always tried to understand how businesses work but throughout my working life I've been baffled by the unwillingness or inability of so many people to do the same. In my early twenties it would be people frustrated they had to work the early shift on the weekend's in Texaco. We were all pissheads so whoever was in at 730 was going to be suffering and the lads would express frustration. "How can Phil put me on the fucking early again?". Oh I don't know, perhaps he needs someone to open the business in the morning so we all have to do this every couple weeks? Call centres are ripe for this kind of nonsense - one particular example still echoes loud in my mind. In Carole Nash one year at the height of the recession, we had a pay freeze. I was hiring new staff on a pittance, 18 or 19k basic. The highest paid person in sales was on €27,500, about 3 grand more than the closest to him. Most people griped about the pay freeze, but it was of course the big earner who griped the longest and loudest about how unfair this was. I pointed out he was earning miles more than anyone else, and well above the market average for his job which we'd seen from our benchmarking. He just wasn't happy. He should get a pay rise because a year has passed by, to hell with the realities of the world. This is a relatively extreme example but still a reasonably fair reflection on the point I'm making. Often times individual people in a large business are completely unaware that company doesn't revolve around them, and express their frustrations long and loud at the most basic and logical occurrences around them, as though they are happening to them personally. They keep mental note of all the manners in which they've been wronged and get bitter. I know this because I was guilty of it in the past. And that negativity is contagious, spreads like wildfire. This behaviour is anathema to me in 2018. So totally illogical, I just don't understand it. Don't sweat the small stuff is a creed to live by. You can choose to focus on the positive, and enjoy your day, enjoy your life, bring those around you up with positive vibes. Or you can focus on the negative, suffer your day, be victim to your life and drag those around you down with heavy, negative energy. Just the energy you bring can impact those around you. So broader than work - at home and in your relationships too - take a microscope out and really look closely at your life - what attitude are you bringing to the party? How does that affect you positively or negatively? And how does it impact those around you?

I use work as an example because it is something most of us experience but be aware of how you frame everything in your life. Take responsibility for your happiness. No one else will, and -  excuse me while I put on my philosopher hat - nothing external will ever provide true, real, genuine happiness. It starts with you. I have learned the power of your words. When I went through my mysterious and prolonged illness a number of years ago, I heard someone point out that using the word 'suffer' is incredibly disempowering when it comes to illness. You tell people 'I suffer with depression/epilepsy/ME'. You're telling them and yourself you're a victim, setting out with your words that you suffer. I never used that word again. I would tell people I'd been experiencing X or I had Y. I wouldn't 'suffer' anything. What can you frame or word differently to shift how you feel about it? What can you do to put the power for your happiness back into your hands?

I'm cognisant that I may come across as cold or unfeeling here, but that isn't it. Far from it - I'm an empath, I spend much of my life feeling awful for other people because I'm so bloody sensitive. I understand we all experience challenging obstacles, unpleasant situations and inopportune circumstances every day. And I'm aware how blessed and lucky I am to have the life that I have and many others aren't so fortunate. But I'm equally aware that many people in my life are blessed or lucky too, but they can't, don't or won't see it because they are too busy with the negatives. Whether that's 'suffering', settling old scores, focusing on every little irritant in work, holding on to petty little gripes, or whatever else life throws at you, always remember that you're in charge. Your thoughts don't control you, you control them. You decide which ones you reinforce and select, and which ones you dismiss. 

Of all the paths I've walked on the journey that has taken me to this contentment I feel today, without question the longest, most challenging, but most rewarding was this one, the act of taking responsibility for how I saw life. My natural response is usually negative and I am prone catastrophizing things - I get 3 penalty points, my head thinks 'I'll end up losing my licence'. I make an error in work, my head thinks 'I'll get sacked'. I have an argument with a friend, my head thinks 'he's not gonna want anything to do with me again' - and it's only through repetition-repetition-repetition that I have arrived here. My brain still goes there but instead of reinforcing those thoughts and sending myself headlong into worry & anxiety which then sends my thoughts even crazier and begins a vicious circle, I quickly nip it in the bud. I get 3 penalty points, I better drive slower. I make an error in work, I'll take responsibility and fix it. I argue with a friend, our friendship is strong and we'll survive, it's nothing to worry about. It's up to me. 

And guess what - it's up to you too. So I'll ask you one more time. Today, this life, the one you're living as you read this:

Is this heaven, or is this hell?