When You Stop Living In The Fluff, You Open Your Heart To True Happiness
We all do it, without even noticing. We jump at the thought of attending the next new exhibit, that fun new dining experience, that last minute sale at the mall or responding to the latest gossip or post on instagram, and why? It’s thrilling, a rush of excitement that hits us like a ton of bricks and creates a glossy happiness that numbs any reality that we do not want to deal with. It is temporary but not permanent. What we are doing is living in the fluff of life. We are blocking out everything to fill our lives with temporary happiness or the fluffiness of life. Pick your poison, but I choose to escape the fluff and break the cycle.
Have you ever stopped, and I mean really stopped, to think about your life and where you have been for the past year, 8 months, or even… my God, the last two weeks?! What have you been doing to make yourself happy, to make your soul and whole being happy? What good things have come into your life, what hardships have you really had to deal with that you can be proud of and how far have you really come? What obstacles have you conquered recently, or have you been a prisoner of the fluffy world as well? Have you been coasting, blocking out the real stuff and covering it up with the “fluff”?
Not everything “fluffy” is bad, don’t get me wrong; sometimes we need to escape from the hard world we must walk on and go to the movies, enjoy a glass of wine at a restaurant, or check out a new upscale bar with some friends. But what happens when those “fluffy” temporary solutions to dealing with reality take over, well, we begin living in fluff.
Our minds become fogged and glazed over by using the temporarily fluffy sources to make us feel better instead of dealing with the not-so-fluffiness that stares us in the eyes when times get hard.
The key to not getting trapped and diverging ourselves into an addiction of the fluffy world is to be able to take a break, a detox, and not allow the temptation of fluff to cloud our minds and make us obsessed with these things. Things such as attending the newest, hottest event or jumping on the bandwagon of the latest trends or posting a new pic on the gram. The problem with fluff is that when you fall into it for so long, it’s hard to get out. We become so conformable with the fluffy world where everything is perfect. We can put on our filters and elevate ourselves to look 10 times better to make our fluffy personality stand out. But we forget about the things that are more important. Those things that we cannot neglect, our feelings, our healing processes, our heartbreaks, and our passions and goals. We want to be happy, and we want to be happy now, so we resort and reach for the fluff more and more.
I want to ask you to really think about what you have been doing and who you have been for the past eight months. Has the “fluff” of the world consumed you? Have you been so wrapped up in trying to make yourself happier by glossing your life over with quick fixes or stuffing yourself into “fluffy” situations that you can’t really remember where you have been or who you have been in a really long time? If you feel that you are living in the fluff right now, the cycle is up, the timer has rung, and it’s time to start removing the fluff from your life.
It is as simple as not going out one extra night during the week and cooking yourself dinner instead to enjoy time alone. It is taking an extra five minutes in the morning to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you’re going to have a great day instead of watching stories on instagram about how “happy” everyone else’s life is. It’s not stopping for coffee in the morning but instead sleeping in five extra minutes and letting the fresh air and cool breeze wake you up on your drive to work. Finally, it’s putting down the phone for a day to not have the fluffy distractions consume you. The fluff will still surround you, but it’s your responsibility to not become suffocated and stand up to break the cycle to create a more peaceful and fluff-free world for yourself. Trust that your fluff doesn’t make you, it only wears you down after time, and finding strength from leaving the fluff is when you find a place you will never want to escape from.