Its my birthday

I think I know what you mean. I remember when I was a teen, it was so hard to figure out what the “right” thing to do was, because I kept getting conflicts between what one person expected, compared to what another person might expect. Parents were divorced, my mom remarried to a drug addict, and things just went haywire – I learned the hard way that trying to live up to the expectations given to you by other people will often lead to very bad results, and the only reasonable way to live is to establish your own realistic expectations for yourself, based on what you feel is the right way to do things. If you feel upset about the suffering others go through, or feel guilty because you think you have it better than those people do, then try to do something about it – try to help, to be a force for good in the lives of those around you. You don’t need to solve their problems or fix their lives, because that’s impossible, but the act of caring and the little things you can do is often more than what anyone else is doing. It’s also a good way to put your own problems into perspective and it gives your subconscious mind time to mull over how to resolve whatever issues you’re confronted with in your own life.

Just $0.02 from a crazy fantasy creature from a Dr. Seuss book.

If you base your decision to continue living, rather than checking out (proverbially), on how you feel… what if how you feel rarely changes, regardless of circumstances? I think there has to be more to it or there’s a risk that people might fall into the trap of thinking that how they feel is sometimes something they should be afraid of, or try to avoid. Even those bad emotions – anger, fear, pain, sadness, despair, etc – are purely human, and just another part of what it means to be alive.