What about now? Are you still getting the most of what life has to offer? How is your relationship with your spouse? Are you enthusiastic about every day? Or have you turned you into a mirthless lump? What happened?
Life probably wore you out. You increasingly took people and things for granted. You forgot to nourish your sense of self-worth and gratitude. You forgot to feed love and joy and they very simply withered. Now all your demands and constant diatribes have distanced you from the people who love you the most.
And you are not alone. We are all at risk of allowing life to crush us under its lumbering, unsleeping weight. When we were younger, perhaps we were less disillusioned, more passionate, more resilient to the lashes, but after some time, we began to feel the strain. Our lesser instincts began to creep into larger spaces of our lives. We got lazy, ill-tempered, discontented, suspicious and fearful. We became pessimistic and saw doubt and shadow in everything.
The good news though, is that your situation is not hopeless. Most people stay in such crippling traps because they never realize that they have a problem and need to do something about it. They blame their plight on other people and the belief that "that's just the way life is". But life doesn't have to be this way. It's like this now because you did nothing to prevent it from sliding down the slippery slope. You saw termites eating away at the corners of your house and did nothing.
But it's never too late. You created the present conditions and only you can make things change.
Has the interation between you and your partner been reduced to how he or she forgot to pay the bills or missed that crucial turn? Does your partner avoid conversation because he or she is afraid that you might blow up again?
Bring back the praise, the compliments and expressions of love. Touch each other lovingly again. Indulge in fun activities and good thoughts. Crack more jokes. Practise more forgiveness. Banish unreasonable people from your mind - it does not hurt them that you are getting all angry and flustered.
Find a away to make things different. As with every solution, it all starts inside. Be good to yourself today. Don't wait for the other person to make the change. Life is too short.
Eugine Loh, 938Live, MediaCorp Pte Ltd
