I Have Learned That Being With Those I Like Is Enough

“I have learned that being with those I like is enough,” wrote Walt Whitman with great sensitivity. We bring this up to talk about the importance of what is colloquially called “feeling comfortable.”

Let us think about how good we feel when we are at a party surrounded by people who love us. Let us think about the difference between being comfortable at work and not being comfortable.

We can bring up a plethora of situations to speak about the importance of valuing what we have. What makes us happy is the set of incentives that makes us interested in staying in one place with certain people.

Letdown, a question of expectations

It is normal (and common) for us to feel let down from time to time. In fact, the most difficult thing would be not feeling this, because at the end of the day, we cannot hope for our expectations to fit reality or the world that surrounds us.

To qualify this in some way, it would be unfair and narcissistic to expect everything to be as we want it. However, we also do not have to give up on it being that way, and this is where our attitude becomes key.

Imagine we are setting up a party for someone special and we put all our hopes in the world into this process. However, when the person in question arrives, they protest time and time again because what you set up “does not fit their plans.”

This person’s attitude is unfair and shows little emotional intelligence, as they are not appreciating that what is really important is that there are people by their side who love them, and that is something that is usually gratifying for all of us.

With this, we mean to say that when we become the automatic protestor and go around complaining about every detail that does not meet are expectations, we are:

• Wanting to create an unreal world that is not ideal.
• Mistreating the essence of events.
• Not paying attention to what is really important.

Our own circumstances often bring us back to reality, making us see that if we really are not comfortable, it is because we are refusing to accept something that can in and of itself turn out to be wonderful.

Accepting our emotions and our reality

A world of peaches and cream does NOT exist. It is important for us to accept that feeling sadness, fear, or anger are not bad. They help us learn and feel. In fact, we are often surprised when we are comfortable being sad.

How is it possible for us to feel comfortable when there is an unpleasant emotion present? It is simply a matter of synthesizing what we need at that moment. For this, we must first stop paying attention to the marketing that wants to sell us the world as an ideal of peaches and cream.

We are not machines and we do not always come out ahead in life. Realizing this allows us to maintain a proper attitude towards the deluge of problems that sometimes darkens our calm. Well being is not only obtained through happiness , but also through the acceptance of our experiences, the search for what is good for us, and finding our place.

In short, as we have already said, to be comfortable, we need an attitude of acceptance and coexistence, because at the end of the day, he who has a wonderful life has it because he admires its beauty, at the margin of which bad things sometimes happen.

To finish, we want to leave you with part of a poem by Borges that we have already used on other occasions, “In Time I Learned”: