It has come to my attention that people believe that I live a very sad and dreary life from what they read on my blog. Please allow me to put these worries to rest. My blog is a narrative of what I believe to be the interesting events of my day to day life. It is written not for me, but for other people. As such, I try to make it as interesting as possible. This means that the events which I describe will be negative more often than they are positive, since bad news sells newspapers. Moreover, when I am happy, the last thing on my mind is writing about it on my blog.
Another important function of my blog is as a place for self-reflection. I was recently sitting in the park outside of St. Paul's Cathedral in London (sitting in parks and listening to music is an activity that makes me very happy) and I was thinking about what makes me happy and what makes me sad. I recently told my mom that I was concentrating on experiencing only positive events. What I meant was that I feel that a lot of people are unhappy because they create unhappiness for themselves. In other words, they tell themselves that they should be unhappy because of a particular event, and so they make themselves unhappy if it occurs. For example, say you are very intent on getting into Harvard. You work very hard for four years in high school, you ace your SAT's, excel in extracurricular activities, and somehow get rejected. If you're a normal person, you become heartbroken and depressed, turn to alcohol, and spend the next month telling your troubles to the bartender, who's getting really tired of hearing about them - he told me.
My approach to the situation would be different. Sure, I would want to get into Harvard. And I would work just as hard as you would. But it wouldn't be my goal. I think it's important to set goals for yourself, if only for motivational purposes. Nevertheless, concrete goals are something which needlessly expose you to sadness.
