The Three Little Bears
The tale of The Three Little Bears has a great philosophical take if you are willing to look hard enough. Not too big, not too small, just…… right.
We look at the lives of people through social media and we see lives lived in the extremes. Extremes of fitness, extremes of beauty, extremes of skill, extremes of emotion…and it can leave us feeling inadequate and perhaps less than we should be. But we never see the total sum of that person’s life, we only see the extreme part.
A happy life is never lived in the extremes, it is lived in balance. Now I’m not saying you don’t go to extremes for things that are important to you, of course you do. You have to go out and chase dreams, be better than the person you were yesterday. What I am saying is that you can’t live in the extreme for long because what happens is simple human nature, the longer you live in that extreme then the higher the bar of satisfaction becomes for you, and when you sometimes drop below that standard you are expecting of yourself, then that leads to feelings of failure.
I’m also not suggesting that you live life in moderation. There is a saying that says, “Everything in moderation”, but that needs an extension “Everything in moderation, including moderation”. Staying in moderation is simply staying in a comfort zone and we know all we do in comfort zones is slowly die.
And when I talk about moderation, I don’t just mean physical vices such as smoking, eating, sex, social media, exercise…what is even more important to understand is the moderation of emotions. When you are sad let yourself be sad, but don’t let that become who you are. For many years I had a real problem with anger and I let it become a definition of who I was. It took me many years to realise it didn’t have to be that way.
How are you living your life? Be like a pendulum that sways easily from one side to the other but always passes through the middle.
