I was just looking around at some of my boxes as the moving day looms closer. Sitting there in the corner was a distinguishable one that I’ve gotten to know well.
Once on vacation during my late 20s, I was walking through a nice shopping galleria with the woman I was dating at the time. There was a high-end knick knack shop that was going out of business. Selling zillion dollar pieces for a few cents and so on.
For no reason whatsoever, I’ve always liked globes. There was a high quality black one there that, of course, was marked down to a fraction of the cost. About 18 inches in diameter, so something that was easy to see but not cumbersome to display. And I’ve never been the oh-so cultured type to liven up my place with something like that. Yes, this purchase was a no-brainer.
After it got delivered, it waited patiently for me to find a stand for it.
About 15 years and four (soon to be five) moves later, it’s still with me. In that same box. Not only have I never bothered to get the stand for it, but I’ve never even taken it out to see it again since.
This symbolizes my existence.
Rarely finishing tasks that aren’t absolutely necessary. Rarely making the most out of my living enviroment. But most importantly, rarely taking pride in myself, my possessions, and the enjoyable things in life.
I’m even doing the same thing lately with the baseball cards that I’ve collected in the last year. Sometimes I look forward to looking back through certain sets. But as you can guess, that hasn’t happened once. Especially since I’m not done getting some of them put away the right way to begin with.
This may not seem like a huge deal on the surface, but habits like this feed my depression regularly. It all happens for a handful of reasons: lack of energy, lack of caring enough to find that energy, a lack of focus to even remember to enjoy myself enough.
But the main one at this stage in my life is this: all of my failures of recent years. When the huge things that went wrong are often at the forefront of my mind, then I can’t appreciate the important little things. They pale by comparison, so I just don’t care enough to try and harvest any positives at all from them.
This is one of the many building blocks of my most important psychological life improvement project going forward: learning to be ok with being happy. I imagine that would make it easier to shove the bad things aside long enough to appreciate the good.
So when I end up in my next destination after this move, one of the first things I need to do is find a stand for that globe. And then prominently display it somewhere that I can always see it. Stop for a moment and look it at least once a day. Both to enjoy it and as therapy to remind myself to make some of these necessary improvements in how my mind sees life.
Up until this point, it’s represented my bad habits. Maybe now, it can be a symbol of getting them fixed.
Mister A's domain 