Shuck that Oyster!

A phrase that I repeat to myself every day is: “The world is your oyster.” Derived from Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, the phrase means that you can get anything in this world with ease. The pearl inside the oyster shells is actually very easy to take out, because all you need to do is crack open the shells.
 
Trying to understand this statement by only considering the actual acquirement of things is a completely flawed way of reading the phrase, because it’s virtually impossible to actually get everything we want with ease. On the other hand, if we change our mindsets so that it doesn’t only consider its desire to gain something, but instead finds itself in a condition of gratefulness and carefree optimism, this motto is completely possible. When we stop obsessing over what we cannot get from the world, the world can actually be our oyster.
 
One of the reasons for feeling dissatisfied with our lives is our frustration of not being able to achieve our goals or wants. When we feel that we lack the ability or the capacity to fulfill our desires, the world becomes a road full of obstructions that are impossible to cross. The dissatisfaction with our inadequacy makes us believe that life is so difficult and hard to maneuver; life just won’t let us get what we want! Thus, only when we become satisfied with what we already have, the world doesn’t seem so horribly set on preventing us from finding any source of happiness. However, being satisfied with what we have does not mean that we’ve already found our pearl. A better pearl might still be out there somewhere, but if we accept what we have with gratitude, we are not constantly plagued by dissatisfaction of not having something better. Instead, with the pride of having come this far, we feel that taking a couple of more steps toward the next destination might just be possible.
 
This hopeful possibility for the future in our mindset of gratitude illustrates the helpful presence of optimism. The belief that everything will work out in the end no matter how awful the circumstances seem right now pulls us back from the haunting pit of devastation, and pushes us to take the last couple of steps to reach that pearl. Coupled with the satisfaction and gratefulness for what we already have, this perseverance does not have to be painful. Optimism, more or less, becomes a carefree way of living, instead of a tool that we try to use to help us endure our conflicts. The world can be full of possibilities, because we truly believe that it contains these possibilities for us.
 
So, the next time we feel stuck in a rut of despair, think of this desolate, painful world as a round and smooth oyster shell. Then, my brave soldiers, you go shuck that oyster!