For some reason, I’ve been talking about tattoos quite frequently these days. Specifically about the paper airplane, that I once mentioned in my blog post called “A permanent stamp“. The paper airplane represents the travel of life: you start somewhere, but don’t know where you’ll end up.

Yesterday evening someone sent me a link to a story that he recommended me to read. At first, I didn’t have a single clue why I had even started reading it, since it wasn’t exactly the average 500-word story you would quickly send to somebody. However, after reading the whole essay I could say, I understood why he sent it to me. It’s because it happened to be a story about the same thing the airplane tattoo was about.

I will now quote parts of the story, so all credits for the following text go to Grant Spanier.

“We cannot control the events around us. We can plan, we can work hard, we can do all sorts of things to prepare, but ultimately things don’t always go as expected. But if we can remain calm, patient, and self-aware, we can control what happens at every fork in our path. It’s not easy, but we have a choice.
We can tell ourselves the world owes us something, we can moan and groan about how unfair things are. We can choose anger — the well-worn road we naturally gravitate toward. We can let the adrenaline and the lizard brain cloud our reasoning and darken our moods.
Or we can choose happiness. Instead of escaping into our devices and distractions, we can focus on the things we can control. We can laugh at discomfort, pain, annoyance, and realize that the way past those feelings comes from within ourselves. It’s liberating to take control of your path and of your experience in a healthy way. It’s powerful.
…
I’m not arguing about realism vs. ignorance here, or that life is all cotton candy and rainbows. I’m not suggesting “ignorance” is the answer to happiness. I’m simply saying that we have the power, in very real and palpable ways, to adjust our own attitudes. And I’m suggesting that our attitude, our posture to the world, has a direct impact on our life experience. It’s not as simple as a snap of the fingers. It’s a choice, and it’s not a choice that’s made only once. It’s made every day, and it’s not easy. It’s hard, it’s messy, but choosing happiness is worth it.
…
I believe that focusing on general positivity, open-mindedness, patience, and self-awareness will make you a happier person. These things are within reach for any of us. We are capable.”

I’m aware that people might thing this is an odd subject to write about, because everyone knows that being happy is all about changing your perspective on things and blah blah blah. The question I want to ask you: Then why aren’t you happy every minute of every day?

The reason why I chose the photos above for this post is because I was supposed to shoot some outfit pictures that day, but ended up with awful once due to the wind: something I don’t have a single influence on.

I really hope this post messed with your head a little and made you think about everything again :) Don’t forget to let me know what your thoughts are on this subject!

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source: https://medium.com/@grantspanier/seat-21a-9c6cd61caab8