{"id":46802,"date":"2022-05-20T10:38:15","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T10:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=46802"},"modified":"2022-05-20T10:38:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T10:38:19","slug":"smiling-at-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/05\/20\/smiling-at-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Smiling at life."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog is in honor of life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will be incredibly positive and grateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But first I\u2019m gonna blow shit up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015 I wrote my first book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a lot of hard work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could say that it was my choice to write it and to carry the pressure of editing it and finishing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could, but I wouldn\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, I was asked to write it by a guy I didn\u2019t know before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never planned on writing a non-fiction book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I most certainly didn\u2019t plan on being an addict and a depressed and anxious person for decades, so I could leave all that behind and become a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or a coach, a little bit later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those things happened without me setting it up that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They just happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like everything happens, even the belief that it\u2019s us doing it and manipulating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We LOVE the idea of influence and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We crave success stories and methods to improve our lives, and desperately want to learn how people we admire got who and where they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a deep, deep hope that we\u2019re more than just beautiful but random creations floating in the wind of existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that, by itself, is beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking about our purpose and ways to leave our mark, and finding evidence for it, makes life worthwhile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And since we\u2019re capable of being extremely biased and forgetting stuff that is not aligned with our ideas, we get a sense of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s such a deep longing to find the key to happiness and safety and comfort and eternal bliss, that we bend and twist our stories to make them feel logical and malleable and predictable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life just isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a mess, it\u2019s weird, it\u2019s wild, and it doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although it can certainly feel that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re capable of forgetting or ignoring everything we can’t understand, so life looks neat and clean and sensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the many brilliant faculties of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story needs hope, success, and failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It needs people we can look up to, and people we’re willing to crush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It needs futures and dreams, glory and loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it needs everything that we can long for or try to run away from, and all we ever can imagine in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It needs heroes and villains, and a sense of fairness and logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that\u2019s what we go looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what we hope to find, and that\u2019s why we SEEM to find it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it really feels like we\u2019re influencing the outcome of our lives, and many times it doesn\u2019t, but we\u2019ll easily find someone or something to blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ll always find a way to make the story fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I hope I don\u2019t give you the impression that I know what I\u2019m talking about, that I get this thing called life, and that I am somehow ahead of the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anything, I\u2019m probably even more confused and lost than you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, that doesn\u2019t scare me or depress me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t get ANY of this, but it fascinates me just the same, and I\u2019m very willing to live this beautiful chaos with everything it throws at me, even resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve tried a gazillion things that are invented to get some sort of grip on life, that pretend to get us anywhere, and that are worshipped because of their (often perceived) usefulness, but most of the time I was left with none of the results I wished for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is not a bad thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not supposed to be a negative blog or a nihilistic story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s actually the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is about a miracle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The miracle that is life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The miracle that makes it possible for billions of people to live in a completely individualized, personal world, while not seeing that as a clear sign that none of us can be right about anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The miracle that has created countless stories and will keep creating countless more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The miracle that offers the space and na\u00efve arrogance to feel we\u2019re in control (at least a bit, for a while), while we\u2019re constantly confronted with the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The miracle that allows us to ignore its magical aliveness, that offers the opportunity to not see what is so obviously happening all around us and within us, and become bored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bored!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The miracle that makes us believe in a universal good and bad, while we\u2019ve been killing each other over it for centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The miracle that is so much more than a stage or a theatre, that is essentially playful, creative, and unconditional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life is that miracle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s beyond amazing that we\u2019re seemingly walking around having some sort of idea of what it\u2019s all about, and what our position in it actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t have a clue, although it most certainly can feel that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me about it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I wrote my first book, in 2015, it looked like I deliberately picked up that creative glove and started typing away, but of course that was life doing whatever it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it did so because that\u2019s what it does: creating variety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating writers that write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating people that someday would like to be a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating dogs and dog shit and dog shit committees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating everything we can experience, and everything we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s ALL there, and if it\u2019s not there yet, it someday will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life IS a miracle, and that word doesn\u2019t even come close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can find meaning if you\u2019re looking for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you can find nothing but misery, uselessness, and doom if that\u2019s what you set out to find.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of it will be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And all of it CAN feel true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Me? I\u2019m just sitting here with a big smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @rthiemann, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog is in honor of life. It will be incredibly positive and grateful. But first I\u2019m gonna blow shit up. Let\u2019s go! In 2015 I wrote my first book. It was a lot of hard work. You could say that it was my choice to write it and to carry the pressure of editing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,117,100,105,116,113,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46804,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46802\/revisions\/46804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}