because happiness is not something you can cross your fingers and hope for-
it is something you must chase after
even when your shoes are falling apart.
so all puns intended this,
this is a running list, as I am working on it
we all are, so
1. Dissect your devastation
Catalogs your concerns,
survey your sadness-
scrap near everything that clouds your judgment.
Save but a few misery-makers
(for research and development, obviously)
2.Call your own bluff
Discover your own disconnect.
Replenish your well
without having to be told
it is running dry.
Invite your bullshit over for dinner
and then kick him out.
YOU are your own referee.
(Now call foul play already.
3.watch your words
try and chew them
before you speak them.
swallow the mean ones,
the deal-breakers, the day-ruiners.
(they don’t digest well…do it anyways.)
& then when you talk
it’ll be with purpose.
with kindness.
or just (mostly)
without heartbreak.
4.Arrange &Attend your greatest enemy’s funeral.
(Literally? Maybe.
Metaphorically? Absolutely.)
Isn’t it your voice
on life’s loudspeaker?
(Day in and day out
mumbling excuses?
Putting yourself down?)
Shut it up already!
Cut the chord.
Kill the choir of
“I can’t” (s)
that you let dictate
your days.
Refuse to light (even) one more self-destructing spark of verbal negativity.
Silence your sorrows ability to dim you
by dissolving your discouraging vocabulary
(Shoulda, Coulda & Woulda are your nemeses.)
So bury them.
RIGHT
NOW (and don’t
bring them flowers.
don’t even visit those assholes.)
5. Repeat this: “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”
but if it is broken get our your glue and get to work.
Repeat this too: humans are human so
if you are human
stop forgetting
other people
are also.
6. Give gratitude to everyone including yourself-
when was the last time you looked in the mirror and said thank you?
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither were you.
- do not let yourself
fool yourself
into thinking yourself
is just all self.
do not let your lonely heart
scream louder
than your peers trying to tell you
“hello, you are not alone.”
when there are hands being stretched towards you,
(i mean good, honest hands,)
stretch back.
accept them.
- do the same: be a glass of lemonade
to another,
on the hottest summer day.
offer the best of yourself to someone who needs it
but remind them that it is a loan
- remember you are the author-
if the story didn’t end the way you wanted it to.
go write another one.
10. stay astounded
there is nothing worse
than no longer feeling awestruck.
nothing more
disheartening
than no longer seeing the world.
no longer looking at the scars on your skin,
the blank stare in your eyes
and wondering how in the hell
it all got there.
please keep wondering how in the hell it all got there…
<and repeat as necessary>
& 