Are you full of vitality or lifelessness?

February 3, 2013 by Gloria Ogunbadejo (gogunbadejo@yahoo.co.uk) 

Gloria Ogunbadejo
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Vitality is the capacity to live, grow or develop; it is physical or intellectual vigour and energy. Vitality is the characteristic principle, or force that distinguishes living things from non living things. It is the power to survive.

So what is keeping you from growing and developing into who you want to and are meant to be?  What is preventing you from living your life with gusto and to savour every moment? What is keeping you from realising it is your right to be happy, and creating that happiness for yourself? Perhaps, the answer is that you are afraid of something. We all know how powerful the hold of fear can have on an individual.

So what is your fear? Is it the fear of death, knowing that if you fully embrace life, you must accept the inevitability of death?  Or is it the fear of pain? The more you allow yourself to feel, the more pain you will feel. Or maybe it is the fear of suffering, or that of loss of love. There is a pattern which emerges in the belief that the more vitality you have, the greater the probability that you might experience pain.

As we grow up, we can lose a lot of our innocence and vitality. And for some of us, we develop a fear of living fully that we can go through life like automatons. You go to work, return home, eat, socialise and cater for the children. And you carry out all these activities without no real any feelings.

Your happiness at this moment, regardless of what has happened in the past, is a decision only you can make. No one can make you feel incompetent, sad, angry, or unaccomplished, except you. You create your world with the words you use. In other words, you can choose to be happy (or not). And if you are unhappy at the moment, that is because you have created unhappiness in your life. I am by no means invalidating the reality of anything that has happened in your life, and I am not overlooking the realities of trauma, grief, and other human conditions we all experience. However, perhaps in the past (which could be as recent as yesterday), someone did things to hurt you physically, mentally, or emotionally.

If it is not occurring right now, it is in the past. Leave it there! Now since it is in the past, why would you waste your time being unhappy about it? Why would you choose to be unhappy about something that is over and done with, and that you can never change? Getting angry with reality, past or present, is counterproductive.

Allowing yourself to feel unhappy about the past is a common way of preventing yourself from feeling happiness in the present. This is particularly true of people who have spent most of their adult lives basking in the negativity of their experiences. They become professional victims and martyrs, and thrive on their own misery and the misery of others. I am sure you can think of people like that, or maybe you are one of such persons. Your misery is your own creation, but you can change it – right now.

Each moment is a reincarnation of sorts, with each moment you can choose what kind of person you would like to be. You can decide that you will learn lessons from your experience in past, and become a wiser, more balanced individual. That is your right as a spiritual being, having a human experience.

As for those who you think impacted negatively in your life, it is a waste of time to wonder if things could have been different. Those people are who they are and it is time to move on. And if those people continue to behave badly to you, remember that though you cannot control their behaviour, you can control your reaction to it. Simply make that decision to change the way you react.

Things happen in life, and we, as humans, label those things. We assess them and judge them as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘tragic’ or ‘painful’ and so on. But these are words that describe a perspective. Change your words, and you might change your perspective. I realise that this might sound like an oversimplification, but if you pause and think before you speak, if you chose your words with intent and focus on choosing only positive words, there is no reason why your happiness would not increase.