The Zebra Question

I asked the zebra,
Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or quite with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra
About stripes
Again.

-‘The Zebra Question’, Shel Silverstein

For everything I’ve been through in the last few years, I’m annoyed that I have not learned to properly “eject” unwanted emotions. It takes a long while to forgive myself. While the facebook status messages and tweets come off as ditzy, it really is a way to force myself to move on. I opt not to tag my posts in those 30 or 100 days of happiness, because those beautiful moments should be more than a quarter of the year. It should be completely unexpected. It should be realized, not forced upon by a hashtag. Or maybe I’m saying that because there is the nagging shadow of ‘I’m not worthy’.

I’m amazed that for the most part, life goes on and it doesn’t entirely suck. It could be better, but it could always be better. There are hours to days of dwelling on about the things I can’t quite control, the things I wish I had the foresight to deal with better. But I couldn’t even imagine being in a ‘better’ state once upon a time.

If you read this far, thank you for bearing with me. I have tried writing something new in this blog for the last few weeks, but it all came out as too diarrheal, too personal, too passive-aggressive. This, I’m most comfortable sharing since maybe someone out there needs to read it.

Don’t be sorry for life going on. It just is. You won’t even feel great about it half the time, but it may come in handy when you’re waiting out the worst.