June 22, 2013 was one of my least favorite nights. Ever.
What started out as a promising Saturday night with three of my best friends at Strawberry Days Rodeo ended in tears, heartbreak and an incredible amount of frustration. After leaving the rodeo early (which I never do), I found myself sitting alone in my truck, sobbing as I listened to “Highway Don’t Care” by Tim McGraw.
I had hoped my crush of nearly nine months would show up. But he never did, and I was devastated. Not only did he completely blow me off, but I later learned he had been with another girl the entire night. And we all know that few things feel worse than realizing the person you’re crushing on/dating would rather spend time with someone else.
In the days following, I found myself Facebook stalking said girl and saying really mean things about her to my friends. “She’s not even cute,” I told my sister. “Look at those teeth! She looks like a horse!”
We’ve all been there. We’ve all been blown off, broken up with and left heartbroken. (Or maybe that’s just me?) In those moments, it’s really easy for our hurt side to seek vengeance on any party involved. Too many of us have found ourselves mercilessly insulting an innocent person we’ve never met and know nothing about.
We say things like, “She’s too tall for him!” or “He’s clearly not good enough for her!” Our friends chime in, adding fuel to the fire by telling us that we’re “so much hotter” than our crush’s new love interest and that he/she must be some sort of stupid to pass us up. And sometimes we even stoop to insulting a person’s wardrobe. “Gosh, what was she thinking when she bought those sandals?”
And for a fleeting moment, our pain and sadness subside. However tempting it may be to say these mean things, we need to take President Uchtdorf’s advice from his April 2012 conference address: “Stop it!”
Because when it comes down to it, saying your crush’s new girlfriend looks like a horse isn’t going to make you feel any better, however true it may be.
Lashing out at those who hurt us doesn’t do any good; being judgmental and mean only makes us more miserable. Those people don’t lose any sleep over our rants and tirades — we end up bearing the brunt of our own harsh words.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr., an American author, once said, “Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.”
Rather than focusing on the negative in these situations (or in any situation, for that matter), we should strive to improve ourselves. We need to use each and every thing we go through as a learning experience. Insulting others isn’t going to get us anywhere, but trying to become better people certainly will.
If we can learn to be comfortable in our own skin and content with our own lives, it won’t matter where we live, who we’re friends with or who just broke up with us, because we’ll be happy. If we can learn to be confident in ourselves — in all the great things we have going for us and in all the things we do — then next time a relationship doesn’t work out, we’ll be quicker to realize that nothing is wrong with us, and we certainly won’t feel the need to insult people we don’t even know.
So stop moping over that guy or girl who just wasn’t that into you. Turn off that “I’m Depressed” playlist on your iPod and go be happy, because you deserve to be. Stop looking for the negative in others and look for the good in yourself. Because until you do that, no crush, no boy or girl, no relationship is going to make you happy. Your happiness is in your hands, and in your hands alone.
In the words of Buddha, “You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
