There was a quote that haunted me since I heard it in high-school. It read, “If everything in life is going good, be assured something bad is around the corner” or something to that effect. It haunted me like a competent bill collector. It riddled all of my highs in life with the dread that just around the corner, there was a dark place to come. Something so scary just around the corner that I couldn’t even imagine or prepare for because life’s a bitch and she is not going to tell you if she decided to slash your tires or break your car window. Is it heart-break? Death? Rejection? Failure? Or a bundle package of all four and then some.

Attempting to sustain perfection can be almost as daunting as actually going through the bullshit, so I’ve learned. The anxiety of what’s next can put a devastating damper on any happiness one would desire to sustain. My main question after this revelation is how do you avoid the unhappy and embrace the happy? Is that even possible? Must we go blindly with the current state of happy until misery knocks or watch happiness fleet while we prepare for the next big catastrophic move the world makes? Are these our choices? To be naïve or to be jaded, not much of a choice.
My dilemma is mainly how am I supposed to keep this sunny disposition that “The Secret” tells me I need to attract more positivity if I know that life is a cycle of good things for bullshit just to follow. Or maybe, just maybe, life isn’t good things with bad things to follow. Perhaps, life is good things with more good things to follow, even the fucked up shit.

Ponder the idea of the fucked up stuff that happens to us really being that silver lining that we all seek and desire? Besides, if the truth is all about perception; how come we can’t make the most tragic things into the most beautiful? If we can cry at a wedding, how come we can’t smile at a funeral if we just tell ourselves that it’s okay to do so and have our perception change that it is in fact the demons in our lives that are the blessings? Just more blunt and arresting with their approach.

I remember as a child seeing dandelions. Dandelions were so mystical and cool to me, they were my favorite flower. I could hold them, spin into a small circle and all of the pedals would blow into the air, letting me create my own snowstorm despite the season. Dandelions, like stars, boys, and bright colors fascinated me. That was until I found out that dandelions were actually not a flower, but a weed, a life sucking weed. I soon too found out that stars died, boys broke hearts, and bright colors faded. That negative antidote shifted my vision from how I originally saw dandelions as something ever-changing and magic to something evil, but should it have? Sure, dandelions can be seen as negative, but for a not-so-brief time I saw them as beautiful and positive; and for that time, they were because I said so. Even more crucial to the conversation, I ‘believed’ so, so it was so.

If I were to apply that same psychology to my current dilemmas, what would my happiness look like? It probably would look less like something to be protected and ceased upon and more like a resting time for the really, really good stuff. The real happiness is the stuff that infests your guts and keeps you awake at night. It’s so good that you can’t sleep and can’t eat. What if the wars, the cancer, the tears, the heartbreak, the disappointment were in actuality the beautiful things life has to offer? Besides, would Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting be as breath-taking if we all didn’t know Jesus was to be crucified the next day? Probably not and our lives wouldn’t be as beautiful if it weren’t for our dark challenges, leaving room for our golden triumphs.

It’s about time we all look at our lives more like a piece of art. The crude and disastrous moments are what makes the colors up for interpretation, the symbols hidden in the acrylic are layered in meaning, and what makes the body of work timeless. Happy might be pleasant, but it’s boring and stagnant. Misery does love company, but maybe it’s because that’s where the stuff dreams and innovation are made out of. Life is all good, even the fucked up shit is made out of golden dandelions.

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