I often find myself counting the reasons that my life is too hard, too unmanageable. So many mornings, when my alarm goes off, I debate staying in bed and letting the world pass around me. I feel overwhelmed and unequipped and insignificant more often than I’d like to admit. When I could either start my day or spend another hour in bed, that extra hour is always tempting.
But today, my alarm clock went off and I got up. I made myself a cup of coffee, threw my hair in a bun, sat down with my to-do list and got to work.
Recently, I started listing off the good things about my life apart of my to-do list. There has been something magical about listing daily “wins,” both tangible and intangible, that has made me feel more productive. On the days I don’t finish my homework, don’t spend time writing or don’t do my laundry, I find solace in writing down “was kind when it was hard.” So often, I forget that being a good person is just as important as being a good student, employee or roommate.
When I catch myself stressing about school or work, I list the wins.
In a world that characterizes happiness by success, we are not winning enough. I know and appreciate that our standard for excellence as it relates to activism, humanitarianism and professionalism continues to be raised. But it shouldn’t have to be harder to be happy. I think we drive ourselves absolutely crazy by taking jobs, volunteering or going to events that are going to look good on our resume. We’ve gotten so busy trying to prepare for a job we don’t even know we want that we miss out on the little things that can be big wins.
I don’t know what a big win is for other people. I know for me, a lot of big wins will come from things I absolutely worked for: scholarships, my undergraduate degree, admission to law school, my first “big girl” job. And those things are so important. But they are important because they are things that I want, not things I think I need.
My other big wins are often less tangible and certainly less “listable:” reading a book I’d been really meaning to get to, getting enough sleep, laughing ’til my stomach hurts. Without these wins, these daily wins, the big ones are out of reach before I even begin working.
Living in the world is hard, but it is the only thing we ever get to have some modicum of control over. And we have to do it every day. Think of all the things you would stop doing every day if they made you unhappy. Your life shouldn’t be one of them. Life is meant to be lived, to be loved and to be taken a little less seriously.
Today, I found a win in the perfect tea-to-sugar ratio. And that’s plenty.
