Wednesday, April 12, 2006

inside/outside/happiness

A long time ago (ago not that long) I made the decision that if I have a choice between being happy and being not happy to choose to be happy.

And a lot of times one can make a decision to move from being not happy to being happy. Most of the time the decision is internal. but occasionally it is external.

Like when Dan Savage tells a gay man in a town of 17 in the American midwest to move to a big city. At some point no matter how many choices you make inside - the environment might make it completely impossible to actually be happy.

The flip side of that is people who try to run away from their unhappiness. People for whom it is easier to move across the world than to address what is going on inside. But evenutally it catches up with you and you have to move again. etc.

And sometimes it is hard to know which is which. When to cut and run and when the problem is internal. Usually my problems are internal - but there is an occasion or two where I have to reflect an internal decision with an external change.

In order to know what you should do you have to trust yourself. And until you figure out what to do - you have to trust that you know yourself well enough that eventually you will figure it out. And lucky for me - I trust myself.

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