I hope this summer has found you well. I hope you have opened up to discovering the possibilities present. I hope you’ve opened up to ways that you can be a creator of whatever it is you want. If none of that resonates, I simply hope you have been happy.
That’s what I’ve been trying to find, trying to be.
I’ve never been the kind of person who uses the word happy as a state-of-being. Partially because I’m naturally a little manic and fluctuate between feeling over the moon excited, pit of despair depressed, and the most common feeling: nothing. There’s a lot of nothing, dull, boring types of moments in my life. Happy seems elevated beyond ordinary in a way I’ve never felt I could meet.
You know those scales with smiley faces at the hospital that say “rate your pain”? There are usually 10 levels, with 1 being the least and 10 being the worst pain. Somehow, I invented my own scale for my state-of-being with 10 being happy. So if 10 is the best, can you really feel like a 10 all the time? No. Or, at least I don’t think so.
Basically I’ve withheld my feelings of being a 10 and being happy for a while.
You might be thinking: why would you do such a thing? It sounds like you’re making life harder on yourself.
Damn right, I am. Primarily, this is because being a ball of stress and anxiety has been my resting state. That is the way I’ve felt for months and that comes from me forcing myself to do a lot of activities and be in situations that I were just not working for me. I was working in a job I hated, which younger me promised this would never happen again, but here I was. Then, even the enjoyable things I did in addition were filled with a rushed and strained energy. Having majority of my days spent on things I hated made me put a lot of pressure on the things I liked to fulfill my every need. Everything was out of balance.
Another factor to not feeling like a 10 has more to do with long-term planning. I might feel good one day but what if I happen to feel even better on a future day? Saving my 10s, essentially. If I rate my happiness today as a 10 then can that future happiness be a 10? As a human being, or maybe simply as me, novelty of experiences impacts the way I feel. I have largely formulated ratings for how I feel based on the experiences I’m having. If novel experiences are rarely repeatable then perhaps my happiness cannot be either. It’s worth noting that I’m not purposefully doing any of this.
Through lots of self-reflection, I’ve realized I have been withholding feeling happy because it’s something I can control.
Just to unpack this a little more, it’s not a bad thing to be influenced by experiences as a marker for how you feel. Things like: taking a trip, meeting up for lunch at a new restaurant, talking to a friend you haven’t spoken to in years, trying a new activity are just a few examples of first-time or special events that can really make you feel a little something extra on that day. I can even ride the high for a couple of days!
What happens when novel experiences cannot happen, though? During the coronavirus pandemic, my novel experiences have diminished significantly. There are only so many different teas to make and Netflix specials I can sit through before it all starts to feel the same. Life was feeling comparatively worse than when I was more socially active and got to meet face-to-face with people other than my immediate family on a regular basis. I know I’m not the only one going through this but that thought did not bring me much comfort.
Well, surely, if I was to hear everyone is cured and the world is “back to normal” tomorrow that would make me feel better, right??
For a while I thought so…but there’s no amount of time that the pandemic will last that can make me better. That brings me back to my point about placing my happiness in things happening outside of me.
In days of isolation and monotony, I’ve had to not only create moments of happiness but redefine the purpose of my existence. I say this not to be dramatic (I mean, it kind of is!) but because one cannot happen without the other. Naturally, if I seek to allow myself to say I am happy just because, then I am in control of my sense of happiness.
I am happy to be alive today. I am happy to be able to breathe. I am happy to open my eyes in the morning and begin another day.
A year ago, these words would have sounded so meaningless to me. In a materialistic society, like the one I live in, getting things (whether tangible or intangible) is happiness and success. That’s why I’ve had to take a step back and think of how I could make my happiness less dependent on circumstances or the ebbs and flows of life.
As I shed the work and projects that I was doing before that caused me stress, I feel more whole. It’s easier to find balance because I can spend my days the way I want. Of course, still within financial and circumstantial means but it has given me an appreciation for the simple things and a change in perspective that I was very much in need of.
There’s a book I once read for a college English class called Man’s Search for Meaning. Putting aside the sex segregated title, it is a magnificent book written by Viktor E. Frankl about his time at Nazi concentration camps. Frankl was a Jew, a psychotherapist, a father, and somewhat of an important person in his community. As he chronicles the experiences he has in the concentration camps, his pride, his family, his clothing, and everything that he ever thought that defined him were taken away. Basically, he was forced to redefine his meaning of life.
I am, of course, in much more privileged circumstances at the moment than Frankl was in the Nazi concentration camps, but that is why the book still holds lessons of value. It shows how, in the most dire of circumstances, we all have the choice of how we want to define ourselves, what we believe our purpose is, and what determines our happiness.
All this to say, I now see happiness as something I can allow myself.
I’ve been pushing aside feeling good for a while but each day is a gift. It’s a humbling thing to recognize how magical it is to simply exist right now on Earth. So anything else that happens is just extra stuff outside of me but it is not me. This may sound super hippie-dippie but it just feels true to me. If I had everything taken away from me like Viktor E. Frankl, which hopefully it doesn’t have to come to that but, you know, I would like to be able to remember who I am. Instead of being a girl with many selves and different versions of herself navigating the world, I’d like to be a soul that is whole and one with myself.
While I have a conscious understanding of the mindset shift I’m making for myself, that’s not to say it is easy or that I’m now in some blissed out state! I do believe life should have more ease (this is actually a value of mine) so when things feel forced, I know I am not in balance. At this point I’m not above getting upset about things that are outside of my control and I am sensitive to the way others act toward me or each other. So, it’s a practice to find ease. It’s a practice to not make these outside-of-myself-things mine and not internalizing beliefs of others. For my own sanity and happiness.
There are certainly other layers to this but those will have to wait until another day. I’ve just described one aspect in the giant puzzle of understanding myself and my own humanity. I’ve talked about my experience with people-pleasing and removing all of these things outside of myself to help me get closer to my core. I can’t say that the way I view happiness, or purpose, is for certain but I do know I feel more and more authentic to myself as the days go on.
If you’re open to sharing, I’d love to hear how you create happiness and what your definition of that is. Thank you for reading. Consider sharing this on social media, if you like it.