The Moo Cow

On September 1 of this year, I was scrolling mindlessly through social media and I saw a constant. It was repeated over and over by different people from various places of the world and all different walks of life. They all said, “I can’t believe it’s September first.”

Now, in just four months time, or 122 days from September 1, we are going to see the same people and others saying “I can’t believe it’s New Years,” or “Wow, it’s 2019 already?” They will say this as if they are surprised that they woke up every day, that they did their daily workouts, they did their jobs, and so on. That’s the truth of it. We wake up, we go about our days, we go to sleep, and then we go to bed and then the cycle repeats. But miraculously to some, time passes. It always will.

Maybe some people think their time is wasted, or they didn’t travel enough or they they missed an opportunity, and then when the calendar flips and the season changes, all hope is lost. Well, I don’t think that’s the case.

I was watching a movie recently with some friends called Just Move. You can look it up and see what it’s about. This isn’t the forum where I want to discuss it. That will be for another time. However, in that film I heard a quote.

It simply said, “We are the sum of the stories we tell ourselves.” I heard this quote, I got up, grabbed my phone, and wrote it in my notes. This quote meant something to me. It meant a lot to me. It was a quote that brought together how I used to be, how I think I am, and how I want to be. Let me explain.

We all know the story of my dad, and that I was young when he left. At that time, the story I told myself was that you need to be sad because of what happened. Because you are sad, people will feel bad for you, and empathize for you and care. My story—beg for sympathy because you don’t know how to deal with what’s going on. Right or wrong, that was the story that I told myself, and the end result: a pretty lonely guy, more empty than lonely, but overall someone not so happy.

Let’s move forward. Let’s look at how I think I am. Now, I may stray a bit here, but just stick with me, it will all come together. The world we live in today is a very visual world. For good or bad, we all look at our phones too much and spend far too much time on Instagram. We get to see the highlights of people’s lives and feel bad about our own. How is so and so on that tropical island? How did that person get to go to that concert? Wow, that’s a nice brand new car he just bought himself! These are the things we see. We see the highlights. I think it’s human nature to feel “left out” in cases like that, right?

So as I sit at my job every day and I get to see what others are doing, I can say to myself, “you are more than this,” “you can do better,” “you can make a living writing.” The sum of that story—you’re unhappy doing what you are doing and you want more because of outside influences. Things don’t have to be this way. This is what I tell myself, this makes my story seem bleak. I let outside influences control my reality. I’m not appreciating what I have in front of me. I am missing out on moments and feeling as if time is passing me by, at least by the story I’m telling myself.

I recently had a review at my job. It went well, I got a raise—that's cool. However I remember feeling that I was stuck at my job. I didn’t appreciate that I had a good review or the increase in salary. I was telling myself that I was stuck. But then it hit me. I work for a company that actually gave me a raise. That’s a great thing. This is the same company that used to cap people’s salaries. They don’t do that anymore and the raise percentage is higher than when I first started. That’s actually really great. It was then that I decided to change the story that I had been telling myself. I wasn’t going to dwell on whatever I thought wasn’t going the way I wanted it to. I was going to enjoy what I had the opportunity to do every day.

I made the conscious decision to enjoy going to my job and to bring my coworkers up every day. I decided to get lost in the hour and a half every day that I get to spend with my friends while we move and exercise. I decided to write more, because you know what, I can do both my job and I can write as well! I know, it’s brilliant! What I really decided was to just enjoy every day. What we have now is a happier person, happier than I’ve been in quite some time.

The sum of this story now—enjoy my job, enjoy my friends, and enjoy the days. I think that if we spend more time enjoying our days and not worrying about what we aren’t doing, time won’t seem to pass us by so suddenly. That when we look back as we flip the calendar we can look back and smile, because for each of those 122 days, we appreciated what we had. The sum of our stories will become greater.