8 Easy Rules For Leading A Perfect Life
All you have to do is swear off all worldly possessions...or maybe not
(credit- Stephan Pastis)
Remember that life’s greatest lessons are usually learned at the worst times and from the worst mistakes.
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If you want to read something that will set you to thinking, allow me to recommend How to Live with Uncertainty, by Stacey Eskelin. An American expatriate living in Italy, she reflects on the uncertainty of life and the ways in which we can cope with it.
I’m not unfamiliar with uncertainty. I’ve lived overseas twice, and I’ve worked and traveled in a couple of war zones. I’ve been divorced twice and am now on my third (and last) marriage, so yes, uncertainty is something that’s come to define my life. Not this this makes me particularly unusual, of course. None of us can know what the future holds for us. Some of us have just developed better coping skills.
The question, of course, is how we deal with this uncertainty. Especially given what we’ve all been through over the past almost 15 months in the era of COVID-19, uncertainty has been a particularly cruel bitch.
What follows, then, are my eight rules for leading a perfect, bliss-filled, and fulfilling life. These rules come with no guarantees, of course, and the disclaimer is about three miles long, so I’ve decided not to include it here. That said, I’m sure that you can understand that an essay on uncertainty is going to contain a lot of…well, uncertainty, right??
Without further ado, then….
Rule #1: Shit happens. We don't know what, where, when, and/or how...but it WILL happen. And it will be almost certainly be something you didn't see coming.
Rule #2: That shit may not necessarily be bad. Sit with that for awhile, why don'tcha??
Rule #3: The ghost is under the bed. Or in the closet. The ghost is ALWAYS under the bed or in the closet, so you might as well learn to live with it. Befriending it may not make it less malevolent, but it might make it easier to understand its motives.
Rule #4: People get sick. Or die. Or eventually both. It's called the circle of life. Yeah, it sucks...but we all get dragged out feet-first eventually.
Rule #5: Enjoy the ride. Don't spend so much time fearing your ultimate demise that you forget to live. Memento mori, if you know what I mean.
Rule #6: All advice is ultimately bullshit in the moment. Nothing can prepare you for what will be.
Rule #7: Breathe. Live in the moment. It's all you have. You can’t change the past. You can’t know what the future holds. But you can, should, and must live in the here and now.
Of course, my gentle reader can laugh all of this off as simplistic crap…and probably not be far wrong. I’m not a philosopher or a counselor. I’m a writer with a B.A. in History and Anthropology. That means that I approach this subject with a great deal of imagination and the ability to string together a few moderately coherent sentences. It grants me no particular expertise, however.
Oh…and if you’re wondering what Rule #8 is, it’s pretty simple: There IS no perfect life. There is only the one you have. Live it while you can. If there’s one thing that I can share from my own experience, it’s that one of the secrets to happiness is not having what you want but wanting what you have.
I’m still working on figuring out what the other secrets are. I’ll let you know when (if) I manage to figure them out.