Tips to making good things in life last

It’s the end of the holiday season and everyone either look like zombies with an accumulative hangover of a week’s worth of binge drinking, or that their dog just died of leukemia. Nobody is happy going back to work. Nobody. Maybe except for the lucky bastards who are still on holiday (your time will come, amigos) or rich bankers who made so much money that they are retired by 30 with absolutely nothing to do but drugs and prostitutes. Apologies for the stereotype, please don’t sue me, unlike you I will have to work for the rest of my life to pay for court fees. Ok if you don’t care, sue me then. Just kidding please don’t.

Someone was saying to me that good things (i.e. holidays) don’t last — a typical symptom of the post-holiday blues. But that got me to think, is it true that all good things in life don’t last?

But first, what are the good things? What kind of things do we regard as “good” in our lives? Holidays, yes. Crowds, no. Booze, yes. Hangovers, no. Tasty food, yes. Fat, no. Sex, yes. STDs, no. Music, yes. Love, yes. Breakups, hell no.

See what I was trying to do there? Almost all things that we consider as “good” have bad sides to them, except for music, alright. And ALL of the “good” things don’t seem to last.

So it’s true that good things don’t last. Or is it?

If you are looking for a magical love-making bible to make it last forever, this is NOT the place. And unfortunately, even if you manage to find it, I will still guarantee you that it won’t last. So what am I talking about then? What kind of bullshit tips am I offering?

There is no magic formula to making things last. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. The problem is not that there is just no way we can be on a constant high. It is what we consider as “good things”. All of those things I mentioned except love are things that give us pleasure, and pleasure is short-lived. A kick at best that gives us false pseudo-happiness. And we think that’s it, and we chase after those things because we think that’s what makes us happy. But guess what, we have been chasing the wrong things all along.

Let’s think about this for a moment and not drown ourselves in more drinks and sorrow just yet. There ARE good things in life that last, good things that we cannot count or accumulate. Things like love, friendship, creativity, knowledge. These are things we cannot “own” but they do last.

But wait, how does love last, if there are breakups?

Love can last, relationships might not. If a person close to you dies, do you immediately stop loving that person? No. You might not be able to love that person the same way as you used to, but it’s still there. The thing is, love is not something that we can “own”, it is not a possession or an object, and when you don’t own something, how can you lose it?

So this is really not about making the “good things” that we can count or own last. The number one tip is realising what the REAL good things are in our lives, the things that we don’t have to “make” last, because they naturally do, as long as we keep looking.

Love is not something that we can “own”, it is not a possession or an object, and when you don’t own something, how can you lose it?

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