We’ve all done it.

At some point,  ensnared in a state of overwhelming perplexity, we’ve all resorted to using Google beyond it’s primary purpose of finding out about things, to finding out how to do things…  ‘How to wear a hairband?’,  ‘How to roast potatoes so that they are crispy?’, the somewhat more personal:  ‘How to tell someone you like them’, or even, ‘How to stop eating biscuits?’ (as a friend who shall remain nameless once got caught typing into her laptop after proudly announcing she had given up the cuppa companions for Lent).  Within moments of typing up our query, thanks to the world wide web and all whom who contribute to it, we finally have the answers for which we have been so strenuously looking, and all appears right with the World again.

However, not content enough with the pride it can yield from every Sunday roast it has enhanced across the planet, or the number of Custard Creams it has saved from a vicious death-by-tooth, Google has continued to develop its search engine even further in recent years.  The relatively recent addition of the autocomplete feature has sought to save us valuable typing time by predicting our search terms on the basis of those which are input most frequently by users across the globe.  Start typing ‘h-o-t…’ – you’re probably looking for Hotmail, Google deduces.  ‘a-m-a…’?  You’re probably off to bust the town-centre queues by shopping on Amazon. ‘w-e-d’ ? Alright sweetpea, here’s where you can buy your marital frock…  Clever stuff, right?  (Although it doesn’t always work, of course.  You cannot cure your lack of love-life by searching for a m-a-n on Google.  It will just take you to Old Trafford.)

This evening I found myself turning to Google once again.  After several weeks of feeling exceptionally tired despite maintaining a somewhat healthy diet and regular exercise, I wanted to see if I could source any good tips on how to feel more energetic.  I had only typed in ‘how to feel’ when up popped Google’s auto-complete tool with the suggestion of ‘how to feel happy’.

And – somewhat ironically – that made me feel sad.

Out of every emotion or state of being, the one most people seem to struggle to find – according to what’s most commonly typed into Google – is happiness?

I’m not denying that happiness isn’t an easy state to reach.  There are enough awful things going on in the world today that you’d probably need to live self-sufficiently in a cave,  twenty feet below the ground, alone, wearing oven gloves and a blindfold in order to not see, hear or feel any of those negative things (and who’d want to live like that, anyway?).  Life is just not easy, for anyone, and constant happiness is an impossible task.  I should also acknowledge that people are hardly likely to try and search for something that they do not want, and that’s probably why something like, ‘how to feel like a depressed gargantuan‘ is not higher up in the pecking order of Google’s auto-completed suggestions.  But those things aside, the very fact that so many are resorting to Google to try and find out how to feel an emotion that everybody deserves access to, is nothing short of alarming.

Deep down, I consider myself to be an overall positive person.  Occasionally it’s resulted in me being accused of being naive, and out of touch with the ‘grim reality’ of the world.  Actually, it’s acknowledgement and awareness of that ‘grim reality’ that somehow seems to fuel my positivity.  I’m certainly no eternally grimacing Polly-Anna.  I cannot smile during what is clearly despair.  I have a fair few anxiety-related issues that I mainly keep to myself.  I worry a lot and can sometimes take things too personally.  But it’s those not-so-good ways of feeling that make me take stock of and value all the good things in my life even more, no matter how big or small, or make me instigate the changes that I know I need to, and ultimately that cheers me up.  And so all in all, I am not a naive rag-doll who cannot understand why the whole world isn’t happier, I am nothing more than a complete hybrid of emotion.

Just like everybody else.

But I still think that it says something of concern when, according to Google, a lot of our folk are trying to work out how, or why, they should be happy.  And then it makes me wonder, is this sense of general dissatisfaction a by-product of the very nature of the society in which we live?

Those of us who live in the West are extremely fortunate to do so.  Whatever you like or dislike about Britain, you cannot argue with the fact that by being a British citizen, you have access to a lot of things that many people in the World do not – fresh running water, free healthcare, free education, basic living costs, shelter, food.  We take those things for granted every single day of our lives, and then we display shock and surprise when humanitarian efforts such as Comic Relief evidence that there is a far less rosey life beyond all that.  As a society we gape alongside Z-list celebrities sent out to deepest Ethiopia to fawn over dying children, and then inform everybody that we’ve ‘done our bit’ by pledging £5, before heading to bed with a Rich Tea and glossy magazine when we then seem to forget all about it until the next year.

On top of the basics that we have, we also enjoy a lot of luxuries here in Britain, luxuries that over the years have virtually morphed themselves into ‘basics’ – such as widespread internet access, mobile phones, cars, video-games, holidays.  We also enjoy a pretty remarkable set of human rights and freedoms, some of which are barely decades old – indicating that we live in a society that actively recognises and promotes everybody’s right to a decent life.  Provided you don’t seek any harm to others, you can pretty much be whoever you want to be, and do whatever you want to do, in Britain.  Our women are no longer oppressed by inequities within the law, and our children have more choice than ever before about the kind of paths they wish to pursue in their education and later careers.

We should be the happiest we’ve ever been, but statistics suggest that we’re far from it.  More British people than ever before are looking to emigrate.  They feel that a better quality of life can be found elsewhere.  They’re not fully content with what they have here… and part of me wonders if they’ll ever be content with what they have anywhere, because it seems to me that our society as a whole just does not know when to stop looking for or wanting more.

Remember when mobile phones first became popular?  An old Nokia ‘brick’, with enough storage for about ten text messages, and an in-built game of ‘Snake’ was all people wanted, and that was enough.

Nowadays, most people couldn’t entertain the thought of possessing a phone with such basic features.  They’ve become accustomed to having the internet at their finger-tips on devices that can pretty much do anything besides wipe your bum for you (and even then… I give it time…).  Vast technological improvement in the past few years has seen things that were once luxuries transcend into what now appear to be basic needs, and a lot of people – myself included – seem to have forgotten how they managed without.

For sure, things shouldn’t necessarily cease developing just for the sake of humility, but it’s down to individuals themselves to invest their own personal time into reflecting on the difference between what it is they really need in life, and what it is they think they need, because the truth is, it really shouldn’t take much for people to be happy.  Varying circumstances aside, it’s certainly not the sort of thing that anybody should ever feel the need to resort to a faceless internet search engine to try and find.

Is unfulfilled desire at the root of a lot (but not all) unhappiness?  I’ve certainly come to think so, and instances such as the recent killings in the U.S by a young man frustrated by not having the intimate relationship he wanted with a female seem to only make me believe it even more.  And stories like that frustrate me so much because that young man had so much that so many others can only dream of, but he didn’t realise it because he was too fixated on the things he didn’t have.  And that’s just typical.

If people got into the mindset of appreciating something they do have each time they think about how much they want something they don’t have, I wonder if Google’s auto-complete tool would source the same responses…

 

 Song of the Day:  Grouplove – Raspberry

Grouplove are a contemporary Rock band from the States, and this song is – incidentally – the best song that The Pixies never wrote…

There are two personality traits that absolutely do my nut in:

– People who try taking the higher moral ground by claiming that they never judge others.  At all.  Ever. No sirree.

– People who are judgmental to the extent that they consider their beliefs and perceptions to be fact, regularly dictate these ‘facts’ to others, and are not prepared to consider a different viewpoint.  At all.  Ever.  No sirree.

Maybe you’ve met some of the first kind, or second kind, or maybe you’ve even met people who display signs of both of those traits.  It wouldn’t surprise me, because the practise of being judgmental is something which our modern-day society has a lot to say about.

As most already know, the UK has not always been as tolerant of diversity as it is today.  Despite the vast number of improvements over the years,  there are still many gaps in need of the creation of a big, cast iron bridge between them before we can really think about classing ourselves as an egalitarian society.  However – we are getting there, and constantly making progress.  A combination which includes – but is not limited to – passionate human rights organisations, developments in the law, and inspirational individuals have all contributed to a society that is much more welcoming of different types of people than it was say, fifty years ago.  Rightly so, and long may that continue.

However, there’s a particular word, defining a particular characteristic, that has seemed to become a little misunderstood and stigmatised throughout this process.   Over the years, it’s gradually turned into become of those ‘buzzwords’ that any person or organisation will claim not to be, in measure with the new movement, but which is actually a fundamental and automatic part of human nature – the trait of being judgmental.

At this point, you may be finding yourself adamantly telling yourself that you are not judgmental, but if you are, then the likelihood is that you too have been swept up into this idea that to judge others is a big no-no that is not and cannot be done ever ever ever.  But when you sit and really think about it, each of us are judging others all the time.  We judge anything, anybody, anytime.  In the same sense that we judge the road as being too busy to cross, we find ourselves judging other people based on our interactions with them.  We may judge that people are unfriendly, or beautiful, or funny, or malicious, or kind-hearted, or lazy, or *insert any other adjective here*.  We don’t always acknowledge it as such, but anytime we do this – we are making a judgment, and being judgmental.  It’s automatic, and it’s based on experience, but it’s still judgment – a belief based on a personal interaction with a particular person or thing.  In my mind, it is verging on the impossible to be non-judgmental.

I’ve considered this idea a lot lately, and it’s been only by doing so that I’ve started to be receptive to just how often I find myself making some form of judgment about others.  Like this morning on my way to work, I passed a lady who had ginger hair and red trousers. My immediate thought was that the colours clashed and it wasn’t the best of choices, and that she was foolish for not realising this.  That was a judgment.  A trivial one perhaps, but a judgment nonetheless.
I’ve been served by cashiers who have given me the totally incorrect change.  I’ve considered their basic mathematical ability and rendered them ‘stupid’ in my mind.  That was a judgment.
I’ve sat next to people on the train who emanate the scents of festering filth and a voice within has narrated to myself that they do not wash.  That was a judgment.
I’ve walked past Wetherspoons in Canterbury at 9:30am on a weekday morning, observed the bunch of folks consuming pints of Abbots Ale on the pavement, and questioned the integrity of their lifestyle.  That was a judgment.
And when I see hooded youths walking towards me on the pavement as I walk within dark skies, I feel afraid and intimidated.  That too, is a judgment.

And that’s just a few examples.  On this basis, I am a very judgmental person indeed.

The prevalent theme in each of these – and other – situations in which I’ve formed a judgment, is that the judgment has often been automatic and difficult to suppress.  A hunch.  A notion.  Whatever you want to call it, it’s there, and I sometimes ask myself where I’d be without it.  Jumping into cars with strangers?  Believing every single word anybody ever tells me? Thinking that a breakfast-time beer at the pub is a healthy way to start each day?  Judgment can serve value, it can be a safety mechanism.  If we were never judgmental, we may as well lie back and stitch, ‘Home Sweet Home’ across our chests and prepare for the rest of civilisation to stomp all over our sorry selves as we sit wondering what we really think about… well, anything at all.

But if being judgmental is an automatic response more commonly displayed than we would each like to think, what makes it such an apparent sin?  How and why is the concept so widely and frequently maligned by diversity activists alike?

For me, it’s a very simple equation:

Judgment + Close-Mindedness = Bad
Judgment + Open-Mindedness = OK

And that is where the difference lies.  That is where the diversion occurs between people who remain judgmental in an automatic sense, and people who are judgmental in the non-forgiving, ignorant sense that has been the key catalyst in this whole ‘war on judgment’ that modern day equal rights activism has fought so hard in.  This is the reason why so many are so scared to voice or even acknowledge their own opinions and judgments.  They don’t want to be misinterpreted as sharing a behavioural trait in common with the kinds of people who are too blinkered to ever consider that their opinion, and their judgments, aren’t necessarily the same thing as ‘facts’.

Other peoples’ judgments and opinions on things never really bother me – on most occasions, they make for interesting discussions and the opportunity to see things from a different perspective.  But when those judgments are over-flaunted, or combined with a nauseating bucket-load of close-mindedness, that’s when the art of being judgmental really, really, winds me up… like an old-fashioned clockwork doll, affixed with a natural expression of 19th century denunciation.

In a world so wealthy with diversity of thought, surprise and contradiction, it staggers me how confident some people can be that what they think about things, people, the universe, is the truth, and how much they think everybody needs to hear it!  Not only do I find it irritating, but it completely undermines the ability of anybody else around them to make up their own minds.  The internet is a great tool for these kind of people.  They leave controversial comments on news stories, or create websites advocating their controversial beliefs, or post a bajillion Tweets per day just to let people know what they think, as if it really matters.  I will always support people expressing their thoughts and feelings, but I have very low tolerance for those who constantly try to portray these thoughts and judgments as facts, or, at the very least, try and convert others into sharing the sentiment.

We all have our own opinions, and we all have particular reasons behind those opinions.  So why do some people think that theirs are any more founded than anybody elses?  And why are those same people often the ones who so seldom acknowledge the other side of any debate they are ever involved in?  It’s that which embellishes stigma to the natural and automatic process of making judgments and forming opinions.  It’s that which makes ‘judgmental people’ seem such a pain in the arse to the rest of us, even when the practise of making judgment itself is something which everybody does.

Do you know what?  I quite like knowing that the judgments I make aren’t necessarily going to turn out as a reflection of the truth, if there indeed is a ‘truth’ (and in many instances, I don’t think there is.  Most things will always be just a matter of opinion).  I’ve been proven wrong about things hundreds of times about hundreds of things, and whilst they weren’t always discoveries for the better, it’s all added colour to the rich fabric of life and taught me the importance of keeping an open-mind about things, all the time.  Because nothing ever stays the same, nor would we ever want it to, and just because we feel a particular way about a particular thing now, we may feel differently tomorrow.  The important thing is that we allow for that to happen, and don’t let the judgments we make turn into a curse that narrows our horizons too much.

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

Song of the Day:  Tunng – Hustle

A nice little ditty from an English band who’s musical style is often classed as ‘Folktronica’ – definitely worth discovering!

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse.

She has spent a number of years working in palliative care, supporting a variety of patients who are trying to come to grips with the fact that they have only days left to live.

You can imagine that the nature of this work has allowed her to spend a considerable amount of time engaging and speaking with people who, upon knowing that they are about to reach the end of their lives, have been able to look back and pick out and divulge the bits they loved, the bits they loathed… and the bits they wish they’d never allowed to happen.

Over the course of time, Ware began to notice several common themes which she collated into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, available to buy on Amazon.

The ‘Five Regrets’ have since featured on various sites across cyberspace, and so you may already be acquainted with them, but for me they serve as both an interesting and very valuable read which is worth sharing again.  I love a good old inspirational quote – and the likes of scholars, philosophers and successful entrepreneurs provide us with these in abundance, but the lessons we can learn from ordinary people, just like you and I, resonate much deeper within me.  Evidently, they had the same affect on Ware, who saw the potential that this information had to change the lives of those who still (*touch wood*) have the time left to act upon these lessons.

So here we go – the Five most frequently cited Regrets of the Dying, each followed by own personal take on them.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

Maybe I’m completely wrong about my interpretation of this one, but here goes anyway…

There seems to be this uncodified yet uniform belief and expectation that by the time you reach the end of your life, your personal timeline will probably read something like this:

Birth -> Childhood -> School -> Work -> Marriage -> Own Home -> Children -> Retirement -> Death

I’m sure we’d all be happy with a timeline like this, but I think sometimes there’s far too much emphasis on this one particular trajectory, so much so that it almost comes across as an expectation that society has – an expectation that either you will actively seek to do the following or… be questioned, whether directly or indirectly, as to why not.

Expectations aren’t always bad things, sometimes they can act as marker points that help us move forward and progress.   But other times they can be somewhat dangerous, in that they can lead to inferiority complexes or anxieties.  People might worry that they can’t match up to a particular ‘expectation’, even if they’d like to.  Perhaps people will worry that they may never find somebody to marry, or maybe they’ll worry that just because they had an x, y or z kind of education, that their future is already written in the stars for them and that nothing they do now will change that.  But most frightening of all, is that people might worry that they are not good enough, and that their life choices aren’t respectable enough in the eyes of those around them, and this is perhaps the saddest part.

Ultimately, the quote says it all.  Trying to live up to any apparent expectations is a waste of time and a barrier to true happiness.

With anything you do, there’ll always be somebody somewhere who disagrees with it.  I don’t mean that in a negative way, but a positive one.  The reality is that there’s no point even trying to fit in with other peoples’ expectations, so save your time and stress and just follow your own.

The outside of the box can be a very scary place to be, you could end up anywhere and the possibilities aren’t always good.  By all means the inside is more secure, but it can also be at times claustrophobic and doesn’t always have as interesting a view. 

In the end, you have to do what is right for you.  It doesn’t matter if people ask questions about why you have or haven’t done particular things.  Live and let live, but for your own good, don’t let other peoples’ expectations dictate your life.  The truth is that there are a multitude of ways in which a life can be lived.  Do the things you truly want to do – be it getting married and having children or staying single and travelling around the world with your own business – and then, unlike a lot of the people featured in Bronnie Ware’s research, you’ll die without having the most common regret of the dying.  You will have lived a life true to yourself.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

Ok.  Some facts:  Work is essential to survive.  Work gives us purpose.  Work challenges us. Work rewards us and, most importantly, Work prevents us from spending all of our days sitting on the sofa dunking digestive biscuits into a cup of tea whilst watching Jeremy Kyle.  We may often moan or worry about Work, but if we didn’t have it our lives would be far more complicated, fiscally much more stressful, and much more lacking in purpose.  You need only look at the various statistics denoting the link between unemployment and depression to know that this is more than just a personal opinion, it’s a reality.

But – let’s stop massaging Work’s ego and making it out to be some kind of heroic deity sent down from the Heavens to save us, because there are limits to the wonderful things that Work can do for us, and in actuality, we need more than just Work to survive and feel fulfilled.  There are some things that Work just can’t, or won’t, ever do for us.

Work won’t love us back.  Work can’t give us a hug.  Work might help us afford the ingredients but it won’t help us actually cook the dinner for our families, or tidy our houses.  Work can also dump us at any time without warning, if Work so needs.  Work won’t sit with us and share a cocktail whilst looking out over a sunset, and Work won’t sit and listen to you share your innermost thoughts and emotions in the way that family or friends can.  Ultimately, when you look back over your life and pick out the most memorable and happy moments, Work probably won’t (and nor should it!) feature as often as your loved ones will.

All in all, Work is somebody you need to keep close, but not too close – a friend who has the capacity to be a bit of a bitch at times.  And so the solution comes in finding the optimum work-life balance, and that can be hard, but it is most certainly a necessity.  Work at work.  Be free in your free-time.  And do whatever it takes to enable it to be that way.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

I’ll be short and sweet about this one.

If somebody cannot respect your feelings, regardless of whether or not they agree, get them out of your life.  Immediately.

The more respectful the people around you are, the less courage you’ll feel you need to be able to express your feelings without fear of any reprisals.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Of the Five regrets, I think this is probably the more easier to sustain – thanks in large to the likes of social networking and other forms of technology that put our friends as far away only as the palms of our hands.  Such technology was probably not available or as prominently used by the generation which was the focus of Ware’s research.

Indeed, this hasn’t always been the case – you need only go back a few decades and the only form of communication accessible to all, aside from face to face interaction, were handwritten letters sent in the post. Before these, there was barely anything.  If you weren’t in close proximity to somebody then that was it,  good luck finding out how they were without relying on the likes of carrier-pigeons or paper cups adjoined by long pieces of string.

But despite how much easier it is now, I still see that this is an important value to adhere to.

I’m the sort of person who can go weeks, sometimes months, without getting in touch with some of my friends.  It doesn’t mean the love is lost, it’s just a natural by-product of everybody being so damn busy these days, and the weeks speeding by so much faster because of this.  Regardless, the people who are the most important to you should be in your heart and mind all the time, no matter how frequent or infrequent the literal contact.

Just remember to check-in once in a while, at least.

 

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I wasn’t completely sure what was meant by this one so I read further into Ware’s article:

“Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again”

I understand what Ware means, but I also think that a general sense of ‘always wanting more’ is another thing which can lead to people not being as happy as they ought to be.

There is always going to be another step up you can take in life, always something more you can obtain – a new relationship, a better paid job, a new phone – but there seems to only ever be a certain period of time before things begin to plateau and you’re already thinking about the next step up – marriage, an even BETTER paid job, a phone which doubles up as a treasure trove of everything you’ve ever needed (and everything you didn’t.)

Maybe what people sometimes regard as an ambition is one of the biggest contributors to people not being as happy as they could be, or not, as the Regret implies, allowing themselves to be as happy as they could be.  Seldom do people ever think or accept that they’ve reached a peak.  All too often, there’s this ‘one thing that’s missing’.

The solution?

Stop thinking about that extra step so much.  Enjoy the plateau for a little bit longer sometimes.  It’s not always about the heights you’re reaching but the fun you’re having whilst you’re experiencing all of it.  If you like where you’re at then stay there until you feel any different.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************

And that’s it, the five most common regrets which Ware noticed were expressed by her patients.

I think the conclusion is pretty clear – stay true to yourself, live in the moment and keep a hold of what’s really important.  Apparently, that’s all we need do to avoid having any regrets later down the line…

And I can believe that.

Song of the Day:  Mint Royale – Show Me

Not entirely sure what the fan-made video is about, but this is a tune-and-a-half. “Jabulani siyashada namhla”.  Indeed.