When did everyone decide that settling was better?

It is like in the past five years of my life, humans have decided that being comfortable is better than being happy. I know of people who stay in a relationship because they don’t want to know what life is like for people who are alone. I don’t get it. I would rather be alone, a little bit sad and knowing that my life was going to be better. I would rather feel sorry for myself for a little while than be miserable in a relationship that is not working.

I understand that it is tough. I understand that you feel like you are going to enter the big wide world and not know where you fit or who will ever love you again. I understand that it is scary as all hell facing the fact that if it all ends that you will be alone but the truth is that we are never alone. You have a family, you have friends, you sometimes have the voices in your head and you have a million other strangers to meet in your lifetime. The world is getting fuller every single day. My friend read a statistic out loud the other day that 80% of the world has already met the person that they are going to marry by the time they are 16 years old. Well if this may be a bunch of bull but if this is the case, then 80% of us have no cause to worry and the other 20% need to be patient, it cant be long now right?

If all of your friends have boyfriends and you are scared to be alone then I have an important announcement for you: Your friends do not care if you are single or not. They only care that you stick around and sometimes go on outings with them. No one is going to consider you a leper because you have lost your ball and chain. If you are happy then they should be happy for you too. It will be gross being surrounded by love while you are throwing your “pity me” parties but at the end of the day we don’t all get to go through the same stages of life together. When you eventually find the love of your life, they may be married and trying to rekindle that old flame, they may even be alone where you once were and need the loving support of their friend who went through the same thing.

If you are scared because of financial implications, this is not a tough one, start making arrangements! Start finding that cheaper condo, start taking the bus or the train to save on fuel; you can buy fewer shoes so that you can afford your own furniture. You always have a way out, even if that way out is a less glamorous out than the life you are used to, it is still a way out so seize it! Some people have parents who will bail them out, some people have siblings who will bail them out and some people even have friends who will bail them out. If you are not a completely despicable person, there will always be someone willing to help you. If you happen to be a completely despicable person and no one will help you, there is this beautiful thing that comes with being an adult, it is called responsibility. You are responsible for your own life and you can take control and bail yourself out.

If you are staying in a relationship because you think that your partner cannot live without you; that is just insulting. Let them be alone, they might just surprise you. I know how hard it is to accept that maybe they will move on without you but this is the nature of the world. It moves on. It keeps spinning. We don’t all drop dead when a relationship ends.

I am the expert when it comes to staying in a relationship long past its due date and I can tell you right now: it never ended with me on top of the world. I stayed and got cheated on. I stayed and got heartbroken; even though I was so relieved it was finally over. I stayed even though I knew it was done, and then I got blindsided by him not wanting to stay anymore. If there is even an inkling of a feeling that it is not working in your favour anymore, then get the hell out. The only good thing that ever comes from something getting worse first before it got better is probably alcohol, antibiotics and cheese. Nothing else, ever! One day you are going to look back on your five year long relationship and say to yourself, “At two years I already knew this was a waste of my time, so why did I waste even more of my life?” and then you know what will happen? Your proverbial inner being will hang its head in shame and move on. Just like it would have three years before it will move on.

Yes being rejected is sad. Knowing that you failed at something is shameful. Being the lonely one again is an awful thought. But be brave! The best thing about a breakup is that it does not kill you, it teaches you what you never want to experience again. It teaches you what you will never do to another human being again. It teaches you how to hang onto certain things and let the less important things go. You are holding onto a bar that is being pulled away from you, the eventuality is that you are going to lose your grip and go flying. Retain your dignity, plant your feet firmly on the ground and let go. Just let go.

Single vs. Relationship

I have always been the girl in the relationship. There was a brief period when I was 20 years old when I did not have a boyfriend. When I say brief I mean that it was brief in relation to the 3-year relationship I had just ended. When I was twenty years old I took a break from relationships by being single for an entire year before I decided I was ready to give it a go again. In this time I saw my best friends, I partied with my single friends and I went to civilised dinners with my partnered friends. It is important to note that when I was single my two best friends were in very committed relationships. This being the case the times that I did see them, we would always include the boyfriend in on our plans.

This gives you some background information into why I am about to gripe in this post. I cannot stand the fact that none of my friends feel comfortable enough to go out with couples when they are single. No one cares that you are single. No one cares that you are alone. Half of us are jealous that you are a free spirit and do not have to factor anyone into your plans. When I was single I never looked at my friends and thought, “ah I want to be you”. I was just concentrating on being me and more importantly I was figuring out who “me” was exactly. I knew that the only way I was going to figure that out was to see as many people and do as many things as possible. No one is going to throw you a pity party because you are single, you should be loving the life that you are given.

In the time that I was single I figured out exactly how I did not want to be in my next relationship and exactly why my previous relationship had failed. In this time I learnt that I liked drinking whiskey and that I rather enjoyed playing 30 seconds in a big group of people. In this time I lived, laughed and loved more people than I ever would have if I were holed up in an apartment with my boyfriend. I did not avoid the people who were happily coupled up, I did not feel awkward spending a night with just one couple. Yes I was a third wheel but man how I loved spending time with my friends and that was the only thing that mattered to me.

I don’t understand why there are sides. Singles vs. Those in a relationship. We are all humans, we all enjoy the same things, and just because that boy and girl kiss occasionally it shouldn’t change how you feel about them as people. If it is that easy for you to write someone off because they have a boyfriend and you don’t, then they were never your friends in the first place. If you feel so uncomfortable around couples that it drives you to avoid them, then you are uncomfortable with yourself and not with the couple. Stop blaming your circumstances on the people who surround you and start taking ownership for your own actions. Try having a game night with only couples; they are only humans at the end of the day. It is really not that scary stepping out of your comfort zone and no one is ever going to make you feel uncomfortable, if they do, then they are not your friends.

I don’t want to feel like I cannot see my friend at my house because she is afraid that my boyfriend and I will make out in front of her. I am not twelve, I do not need to kiss my boyfriend all of the time and I am sure I can wait until you are safely driving yourself home. I would hate to think that if the roles were reversed, everything you think I would do now, is maybe what you would do to me. It all boils down to how afraid you are of being alone. How comfortable are you in your own skin? If you love yourself, you won’t mind that other people are in love with each other in front of you. I am not saying that I am condoning public displays of affection but just hanging out with a couple will not give you cooties.

Please ladies, I am sure that boys do not have the same issues, and this is because they think logically and not emotionally. Lets all just focus on our own being and not on everybody else’s.

You are angry? I am sorry I did not notice with the sparks of spit flying out of your mouth

I work in a restaurant in my spare time away from my proper day job and it always amazes me when I think about the type of people I come across. I have always been a waitress from the age of 16. I really do believe that it is the perfect environment to give someone skin as thick as a rhino’s. The restaurant I work in is fine dining and I wish I could say that it is more glamorous than any other restaurant but most of the time you get the same calibre of people as an ordinary family restaurant. You still get people booking for four adults and arriving with two children instead, you get people who get too drunk and cause scenes and you get people who have no idea how to behave in a public setting. I can tolerate all three of these types but there is one type that I cannot stand. We get a lot of this type. It is the person who complains about his steak and then rips the entire restaurant to shreds because his medium rare was not rare enough for his tastes.

This is why I have a problem with this person. They have no idea how it feels to be on the receiving end of that abuse. You want to say that my manager should not have the job he does and you want to say that my colleague is not a waitron he is a salesman then fine but the minute you start turning to other tables and asking them if they are having as bad a time as you are, that is when I would personally like to shove my foot in your smug mouth.

I do not know where and when humans started getting the idea that we are all entitled to make other beings feel less important than we are. I do not know when the activity of the day became a game of “bash the little person. “ Yes I am poorer than you, yes I am younger than you and yes I am working for you for the evening but the minute you make me feel like I do not matter when I have lovingly taken your order, when the chef has lovingly cooked it and when I have again lovingly brought it out to you, show me a little bit of love and do not mock the way I have put your plate down for you or that plate is sure to be in your lap next time. I do not come into work to be an idiot and by all means if you think that I am being an idiot then make it known, but in a mature and orderly manner, do not make me regret that I have a minute of patience left for people like you.

This does not just happen in restaurants. It happens in every day life. I get people who have so much rage in them and practice it when they are driving on the road. I have seen people yell at vagrants for asking for money. I have been called a “Jew” because I had no money to give. How did the world get to the point that ugliness is better than chivalry? Is it really easier to proverbially spit in someone’s face rather than smile and walk away with dignity and just never depend on that person again? Does it make you feel better to smack someone down instead of explaining why you are as upset as you are? I don’t deserve to be yelled at because your boss-hole yelled at you this morning, and I am sure you didn’t need to be yelled at by your boss-hole because his wife yelled at him on his way to work. Bad moods are so infectious, I can catch one in an instant, all I need is a spark to light the flame.

We all need to practice a little inch of tolerance and maybe then humans would be a great deal happier with their remaining days on Earth.

Its all about the cheese

I feel like I need to share a little pearl of wisdom that was passed on to me by my very generous uncle. I never see my uncle and we hardly talk and this is why it came as such a shock to me that when I recently took a trip up to Johannesburg to see my extended family, he could tell immediately that I was not happy with the way my life was going. He handed me a book and said, “Courtneigh, it will take you twenty minutes to read, and it will change your life.” I am not the type to pass up a good book so I was game before he said anything. I saw those dog eared pages flapping towards me and already my interest was piqued so to be told that the story would change my life made me all the more interested to get started.

The story is called, “Who moved my Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson. As my uncle told me, it changed my life. I am a firm believer that your mind-set is the key to how your life turns out and this book reaffirmed that fact for me. The book teaches you to always plan ahead. If you think that you are on the verge of getting bored of your job, then look for other opportunities. Our life is short, and it is getting shorter every day, we cannot afford to stay complacent because we are comfortable. I know people who are bored as sin with their friends, people who hate their jobs and people who cannot stand the place they live. I have news for you all: the world gets tinier every single day. You can move to another country, you can look for another job and you can find new friends, if your life is really not where you want it to be.

You are the only person who can make your life better. No one else has the capacity to or the interest to make your life better, unless the name of this person is The National lottery, in which case you have a close to non existent chance of that happening. This story is of four characters that are on the constant search for cheese. The cheese is a metaphor for happiness, love and money. The one pair of characters are mice and the other pair are tiny men. Sniff and Scurry (the mice) run on pure instinct. When they find cheese, they do not settle down and accept that their life is made but they keep their running shoes tied around their neck and hope they never will need to use the shoes. Hem and Haw have more emotions that drag them down and lead them to get comfortable and slack in their pursuit of cheese. They find one load of cheese and build their house near this cheese and leave later and later every morning to get to the cheese. Eventually the cheese runs out. Take a guess which pair are more adaptive to the situation? Sniff and Scurry put their running shoes and get the hell out of there; they need to find more cheese.

This story continues to follow Hem’s journey into thinking more like the mice and wanting to move on and find a better lot of cheese for himself. He eventually leaves stubborn Haw behind and finds himself in a massive cheese plant that is ten times better than the cheese he had before. This is all a metaphor on how most of the time change can only lead to good things. Personal growth is always something that is needed in life and we should not put it off because we don’t have the energy to find that little slice of happiness for ourselves.

This story lead me to start this blog, because I feel like I have so many thoughts in my head and not releasing them is an injustice to myself. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is an injustice to others but if someone gets an inch of entertainment from my musings then I am happy with that.

I have decided that any actions I need made in my life have got to come actively from me. There is no white knight that is going to swoop in and make me a princess. There is no “Competition of Life” that is going to name me as its next winner. I have to make myself a winner, I have to make myself happy and I have to make myself into the person I would want to know in this big unhappy and unjust world.

If you are in a rut and feel that you need a change I really would suggest that you track the book down. I am taking steps to be the change. When will you?