Managing Your Misery Index

The “Mis­ery Index” is some­times men­tioned in rela­tion­ship to pollen count, wind chill fac­tor, heat index, unem­ploy­ment per­cent­ages, or flu sea­son progress and inten­sity. From my lit­tle spot in life, it is hard for me to imag­ine any­one in this coun­try being truly mis­er­able (med­ical rea­sons excluded of course). For the most part, we live pretty com­fort­ably — at least by com­par­i­son on a world­wide scale. Our mis­eries have more to do with hav­ing so many choices or deal­ing with com­pet­ing philoso­phies of life (that sel­dom have enough work­ing agree­ment).
Most peo­ple suf­fer from the gap between what they think ought to be and what really is. They do per­fectly well mate­ri­ally, but they are mis­er­able. It is a mat­ter of their mix­ing a lit­tle bit of per­fec­tion­ism with a lit­tle splash of per­son­al­ity rigid­ity, then salt­ing life with a some unre­solved con­trol issues. Let it sim­mer a bit and you have mis­ery stew. It is awfully chewy and gets cold pretty quickly.
Sim­ple faith is a bet­ter recipe. Learn to rel­ish the moment for what it is, rather than what you thought it should be. Relax, the chem­istry of life is not dic­tated by your expec­ta­tions. What life has in store is much richer in the long run than any imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The key to man­ag­ing your per­sonal mis­ery index has to do with respect­ing real­ity and learn­ing to embrace it for what it is. That does not mean that you are des­tined to set­tle for less. It does mean that you can work with what is, once you have accepted it.
It is much eas­ier to change your­self than to change the nature of the uni­verse. If you are a quan­tum physics buff, you know that the rela­tion­ship between the observer and the observed is dynamic. Pon­der some­thing and watch it shift as it changes you — and you inad­ver­tently change it. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, but you have to do some inten­tional behold­ing first. Some­times that takes some work. Mix in a lit­tle awe with cre­ativ­ity and see if your mis­ery index does not improve.