Author: Andrea Grassi

Sometimes you can’t make everyone happy.
It’s ok to say no.

“We act like an old couple”
“They doesn’t seem to love each other”

Both these two phrases are an example of how we measure the life we see.
We measure it through pre-packaged ideas.
When you look back, 50 years ago, everything is different, but everything also stayed the same because even then they had their own prepackaged perspectives that led how they saw life itself.

Mass media amplified this with tools like books, tv, magazines.
These tools became our lenses through which we see the world, we measure it through them to understand if we are on the right track.

But how can this lead to happiness if we’re always comparing ourselves with an ideal standard?
I agree that we should strive for the best ,but is it ok for the best to be defined by mass media?

We are individuals and as such we need our identity and more importantly we need to be able to express it without any fear.
If, by any chance, your identity conflicts with the ideal standard then chances are you will feel like you don’t belong.

The concept of I don’t belong here, the concept of not being part of this whole society, is a tricky one. It’s hard to define the line where it’s ok to not belong, but one thing is sure: If the sense of not belonging starts because you’re comparing yourself to a product of mass media then you should think twice.
Your identity is much more important than a magazine.

When you grow older some things you loved aren’t that interesting anymore.
Maybe you loved going out and watch a movie every thursday, maybe you loved going to the disco.

What changed, how?
Priorities, perspective, and deepness changes.

Priorities because what was important before (finding a girl? being drunk? whatever) now it’s less important.

Perspective is how you look at things into the future. This means that the more you grow, the more you think about how doing something might change you, how it will influence you, how much will you gain from it in terms of growth, happiness, joy.

Deepness is how much deeper you go into understanding an action or a situations.
Let’s take the drunk example.
It’s no wonder that in many parts of our life we drunk too much, why was that?
Maybe we were running, maybe we wanted to shield from some feelings. Whatever the reason, the thing is that at that time we didn’t really understood it.
Now we do, and this puts a lot of weight in how we choose to do things.

We (sometimes, obviously) go deeper into understanding what moves us and this also helps us in saying no because now we know how much we get hurt by doing stupid things.
And while we might want to do the stupid things to feel part of the group we also understand that our individuality is much more important, not because we’re being selfish, but because we have to live with it, we have to stand behind our actions 100% of the time.

“what moves us”, is something I realized just now writing is the representation of how we understand the world and ourselves.
If we get to know what moves us then the rest of the world is no secret.

If you know why you truly want to do something, everything else follows.

Today I saw a sad couple while I was in a supermarket.
It was strange, but it made me realize the beauty of what we have.

We live, we connect, we die.

I know it sound stupid but today is a great day to make someone smile.

Making other peoples happier should be our rule.

Today was one of those days where I got flooded with request at work.
Days like this are hard to love, mostly because you’re everywhere, but you’re nowhere near being effective.

The more the mind change subject, the less you are able to go deep into problems.
This is a common element in the web development world and it’s something I think about from time to time.

There is no easy solution. If your company requires you to be so important then you’re out of luck. Chances are you can’t escape the maze.
But on the other hand you can try to teach people, or to find a way to let them be autonomous.

This way you can be free at least a bit more.
In my case it’s more of casual happening. It happens from time to time. Lately less, and I’m loving the time I spend only writing code, I missed it.