breaking up is hard to do

Photo: Mario Testino

Ending a friendship is tricky business. If you go with the slow fizzle, you risk that your attempts to dodge her invitations will be mistaken as legitimate unavailability, setting in motion a perpetual cycle of guilt. Or you can sit her down and tell her how the traits you once found so endearing now make you cringe, inevitably hurting her feelings and painting you in a terrible light.

When you end a romantic relationship, you can make a pretty clean break. You can give the ol' "I'm too busy for a relationship right now." Or the "I'm not in a place in my life where I can commit to one person." You can even say, "I no longer find you attractive and want to explore the options that my good looks afford me." These do not work with friendships. Mostly due to the assumption that you can never have too many friends. I disagree. 

There are only a finite number of hours in every day. I am at work for at least eight of them. I'm sleeping for another 8-9 (I'm not kidding; I'd take naps if I could). That's roughly 17 hours already gone. Tack on lollygagging and eating and I'm nearly booked up. If you're not M (who I happen to find endlessly entertaining) or someone pretty fucking spectacular, it's hard for me to justify moving things around to spend my very limited time wishing I were somewhere else.

A friend in college once said to me that he always felt special being my friend because I dislike so many other people. That makes me sound like a misanthrope. I'm not. It's just that only have so much to give. I'd rather give a whole lot to those I truly care about than engage in countless shallow relationships. He did also finish by saying, "It's nice to feel like I was singled out." 

That's how I hope all of my friends feel. Because I think you're tops. If you're not sure I feel this way about you, well, I've probably been trying to find a socially acceptable way to end things for awhile now.

awaiting disaster

Image: The Book of Bunny Suicides

It makes me uncomfortable when things are going well for too long. And at the moment I truly don't have any legitimate complaints. Nauseating, right? Of course, I assume this means that something terrible is about to happen. Isn't that how it works? We're each allowed a finite amount of happiness and once the supply is depleted, we're destined to live out our days in a sea of turmoil and adult acne. No? Well, that's what I'm afraid of.

More likely, it will be this irrational fear that eventually undoes my happiness. The ultimate in self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecies. So how can I keep that from happening? Research in Positive Psychology has shown that we can retrain our brains, literally rewiring our neural pathways, to be happier. In one of my favorite TED talks, Harvard psychologist Shawn Achor says, "It's the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality." In other words, it's not our external world that determines our happiness, but how we perceive it. "When we're happy, our brains are more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient and productive." The key to happiness is not success. It's the other way around. But how do we get there? According to Achor, there are five simple steps:

1. journaling (about one positive experience everyday)
2. gratitudes (three, everyday)
3. random acts of kindness
4. exercise 
5. meditation

Could it really be that easy? I guess if you actually manage to do them. I wouldn't know. As it turns out, it's extraordinarily hard to create new positive habits. Bad habits? No problem. But the things that may actually make you a better person are hard work. Another one of the many paradoxes of the human experience. Positive habits take 21 consecutive days to establish. I made it three. And then a whole week. After that, well, you know, things come up.

And after all, as I said, I'm already pretty happy. I don't want to overdo it. But when things do inevitably go to shit, at least I'll have something to buoy me on trips to the drugstore to buy Retin-A and cat litter.