Emanations

It is a sign of one's dislike for something that when you are relieved of the responsibility of that thing, the entire day leading up to it is lightened.

This experience (it happened to me yesterday) should tell me something about the state of my life as it is.  Nothing - Not one thing - should have the ability to make much of a difference in my attitude.  If it does, I should seriously be rethinking my life.

Seriously rethink my life?  Sounds sort of extreme just because an afternoon went differently, doesn't it? 

Yes.  Because if any one thing is exercising that kind of power in a way that is not bad, it would be called fanaticism.  We've seen it before, of course - that hobby that a friend takes up that comes to take up all of their time and life until they're saying, doing and living nothing that is not connected with it.  It may be harmless, it may even be beneficial - but that activity comes to exercise incredible power in their lives.  When something goes wrong with it, the rest of their life is ruined.

Most would say a hobby that dominates everything is not healthy.  The same principle is true of most everything else.

But if that's the case, how does one go about the reconsideration of one's life?  After all, most of us live in our lives.  They're not a third party that we can observe objectively and comment on?  Nor are they a case study for a class - a decision good or bad can have ramifications through the rest of our lives.

Maybe the simplest place to start in this case is simply to look at the parts of one's life and identify (be honest, you already know) what the items are that exercise the most influence and power in it.  Look at each one and ask the question "If I wasn't doing this/going there/spending time with this person, what would my life be like?"

I'm aware that just identifying such a thing does not change it, and that in many cases the ability to change on short notice is impossible.  But even the act of simply identifying such things is the first step towards at least admitting that it does exercise a great deal of impact. 

And we cannot change that which we fail to acknowledge as being an issue.