People here like to complain. About everything. It's been quite hot lately, so that's a great reason to complain. Myself, I quite like it. It's not as impossibly hot as it was last summer in Japan or New York, and I get to cycle which always feel a couple of degrees cooler than when you're walking or sitting around doing nothing. It's mainly due to cycling that I've become used to the area around me, so I knew where the nice(r) areas are and how to get there.
Yesterday I took a train to the next station and walked back home. I didn't really plan on it, I just felt like doing it. My route took me past a nice hillside park with a good view of the area below. I sat down on a bench and stayed for a while, writing down thoughts and listening to music. I realized that it was one of those perfect moments. A moment where I am at complete peace with everything going on in my life. Even if I'm not in control of everything, I know where I've come from, I know where the flow is taking me and I know how to steer myself in the right direction. Sometimes it takes something out of the usual daily routine to remind yourself of that.
I've programmed and scheduled my life around this idea, that sometimes things need to be put into perspective. I walk by the evil building on the way to work occasionally to remind myself of the options I have in life. I go cycling to stimulate the mind as much as the body. Temporary housing contracts keep me on my toes so I have a more open mind about where I can live.
This mindset of clarity never stays long. One can only stay 'meta' about one's own life for so long until the daily-life-ness of it all wanders back in, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're happy in your daily life activities then you'll be happy in either state, normal or meta. What's wrong is to desire one state above the other, always wishing for that which you don't have. Yesterday, in the park, before realizing how content I am right now, my mind wandered back to the Japan days, recalling old daily-life routines: cycling back from the station, going to the supermarket, wandering around the riverside. Instinctively I'm inclined to think that I was happier back then. I like to forget that even back then there were lots of days that I wasn't happy about my life, that it wasn't going anywhere, that I needed a change. Unproductive feelings, as I could not convince myself about what kind of change I wanted. I should learn to keep the past in perspective and not glorify it too much.
Be happy now. The past brought you here and made you think the thoughts you are thinking at this moment. Accept the present and use it to find opportunities to think new thoughts.