Focal point

Entertainment tends to go to extremes, because -- who wants to watch someone meditate, or vacuum, or pay bills?

We are emotional creatures. Emotions keep us alive, so we like that vicarious "safe" fear or "painless" agony on the big screen. And . . . we like that happily ever after solution that is often implied or out right promised.

And we are versatile creatures who learn by watching. Nature planned on us watching our mother, or father, or neighbor, but technology has added a lot of less savory people. Watching leaves us with lots of unreal expectations, because we don't see the turmoil beyond the beautiful face.

Almost everyone has a "cross to bear." The world is filled with things that hurt us, emotionally, physically, mentally, but the art of living well requires us to do what we can with those hurts and then set them aside if at all possible.

Letting the painful parts become the focal point is a mistake.

It's like worrying. Our body thinks that worrying is actually DOING something, but it's not. It's a fine line between letting our emotions out and allowing them to run their course and letting them carry us in a downhill rush to the bottom of the heap.

If I can trick my body into thinking that worrying is work, is it possible that  I can trick it into thinking I am happy?

And if I think I am happy, isn't that pretty much being happy?