Life isn’t always easy. Who am I kidding, life is rarely easy. Most of the time it’s pretty tough, regardless of who you are. I, being well aware of how immensely privileged I am (being an above average intelligence male born in the suburbia of America), and yet I don’t have an easy life. Yes, every day I take for granted things I consider to be basic attributes of life (stuff I wouldn’t even know to think are luxuries!) but it’s still not “easy”. I still have quite a bit of stress floating about constantly, and I think the stress comes by virtue of being a human that exists rather than where you are in life. The only real difference (the way I see it) is the things that are stressful.

Now, all that being said, the argument that “somebody has it worse somewhere” is never valid. You simply cannot make somebody feel better about themselves just because things could be worse. The fact of the matter is that when somebody is sad, it’s for a reason, and trying to make their problem seem insignificant won’t make it feel less like a problem to them. More likely, I think it’ll probably just make them feel worse for seeing it as a problem in the first place.

Negativity is unavoidable. So many things we do are ‘negative’, even if we don’t realize it. Think about it: our daily vocabulary itself is negative. “I don’t… We need less… Stop doing that… I’m sorry…” Even if the context of these statements have good intentions, the truth is we as a species have a hard time seeing things positively. Even my example before was negative. You’re going through a hard time? Well, stop feeling bad, because somebody is out there that feels worse than you do. That isn’t positive, that only brings more negativity into the equation. You’re not lightening their load, you’re comparing it with somebody else’s heavier load. To put into perspective just how much negativity is in our vernacular, I underlined all of the “bad” words in this post. I’m not saying we need to remove them from our vocabulary, of course. I’m simply using it to point out just how negative we are without realizing it. (And no, I didn’t doctor the text to make it sound more negative for the sake of argument.)

So, if you feel like you’re under a heavy burden, or thing’s just aren’t going your way in life right now, don’t worry about it. It’ll get better. But for now, try adding some positivity to your life. As for me, I have no free time and my life is pretty stressful. How did I handle it? By giving up Friday nights for the sake of Dungeons & Dragons. Bad idea? Maybe, but this isn’t an obligation. This is something I want to do, and love doing. Now, every week I’m still the same amount of stressed, but the difference here is that I have something to look forward to.

I’m not sure anyone in my life really saw how close I was to cracking these past few weeks. I still think a vacation is overdue, but let me tell you, Dungeons & Dragons has really helped a lot. I can think about how awful my exam is going to be tomorrow, worrying about whether or not my grade will be up to par, or I can think about the awesome scenario that’s going to happen next week. Worrying about the exam isn’t going to give me a better grade (I’m referring to worrying in and of itself, assuming studying isn’t an option. Which in this case is true.) On a more psychological level, however, relaxing and getting excited about the weekend actually does have a good chance of giving me a better grade. I’ll probably sleep better and wake up more prepared to start the day.

Thirty eight ‘negative’ words, and I didn’t even include any version of the word “negativity”! Oops. Thirty-nine. Does “oops” count as negative? I want to say it doesn’t, but if I say that, it tallies up to forty!

Anyways, do you see how it works? We’re negative all the time. Bring positivity into your life and you’ll see it change around you. Now go be positive and have a great day.