I have been reflecting upon happiness lately and what it means in my life. What makes me truly happy and is it even possible to achieve it? I feel like we use the word all the time to describe how we want our life to look but can't always put a concrete definition behind it. I have moments of happiness almost every day like when I am helping someone at work or doing yoga or drinking tea and reading a book and some days I feel mostly happy but I don't feel it all the time and I don't think we are meant to. I took a horror fiction course in college and we read Stephen King's, "Pet Semetery." There is a passage in the book that has stuck with me for all of these years. I've been searching for it on the internet but I can't find it and my copy of the book is buried somewhere in a box in my in laws basement but the gist of the quote is about how happiness is very fleeting. We may have moments and even full days albeit rare where we are fully happy but most of the time our lives are filled with worry, suffering, fatigue, mundane tasks,etc. I have always remembered this because I thought it so sad at the time but so true. Really think of times in your life when you were truly happy and try to remember if it encompassed the entire day or if there were just specific moments where you can remember feeling true happiness. Its hard to do. They may be one of two like your wedding day or the birth of a child but even that beautiful event is fraught with pain. That is why I don't think of happiness as being a realistic goal. When asked what people want out of life, a lot of times you will hear them say, "I just want to be happy."Usually this means that they want things like a new car or a house or some jimmy choos or sometimes it means they want a life free of pain and suffering. Sadly, in my opinion none of these things will accomplish true happiness. I know this from experience - I got stuck in the trap of thinking, "I'll only be happy when....(insert any goal here when I get a car, a job, a boyfriend) we all do this right? For me it has been: I will be happy once my credit card debt is paid off, once I move out of New York, once I get a job that pays me well but why am I not allowing myself to be happy NOW? Its like I'm not giving myself permission to be happy until I accomplish certain goals and that is just foolish. What if I never do the things I set out to do? Am I doomed to a life of worry and sadness and joyless acceptance? That is why I think that having goals tied to happiness is wrong. Goals are extremely important to me- its a benchmark of where I am and where I want to be in terms of growth but I also deserve to find joy and happiness and contentment in my life in the present. This is a life changing lesson 40 years in the making: to find happiness for several moments every day and to realize that having all of the things I want won't suddenly make everything ok. Once I do accomplish those things, I will search for the next goal and I think that is ok - it is human nature but I have to make sure I fully immerse myself in every experience I have.
I read a book a couple of years ago called, "The Myth of Happiness" and it was about how when we finally get what we want - you know that one thing that we think will make our lives complete, we feel let down. Its because no one THING can make us happy. I can attest to this directly. For most of my adult life my dream was to go to Paris. I imagined it in my head to be a magical, enchanted place and when I finally got there, I would feel like I had truly accomplished something in my life. I drank French wine, I watched French movies, I hung pictures of the Eiffel tower on my walls and dreamed wistfully of stepping foot on the steps of Notre Dame and feeling a completeness in my life. Well, I made it to Paris in 2014 and I did indeed feel that completeness, that finality of accomplishment but only for a few moments. While it was an amazing trip and the city was as beautiful and magical as I had dreamed, once I returned I felt unsettled. The magic went away. There is something special about the anticipation of an event -the way you imagine it in your head is sometimes better than the event itself. The same thing happened when the Red Sox finally won a World Series in 2004 after 86 years. Part of the allure and mystique of being a Red Sox fan was the fact that they seemed to be cursed, destined to always come close but never win the big prize. I immersed myself in this and even taught a class on the history of the curse. It enraptured a whole city for many years. It was passed down through generations - the pain and suffering of a true Red Sox fan was a real thing. Then they won and guess what? I stopped following them. Me, who was a die hard fan , who stayed up late listening to games on the radio, who went to Fenway and cried when they lost and toasted when they won, who learned the intricacies of the game at age 14 and knew the pitching rotation by heart, who cancelled plans if Pedro was pitching. This total live or die by the Sox fan stopped watching baseball. What? That sounds crazy but for me and I'm sure many others, the intangible that made the Red Sox special was gone forever. We could no longer identify ourselves as lovable losers - the cursed team was no more. When they won, it was one of the greatest times of my life. I remember every second of that October and I still look back on it with the fondest of memories but that blissful, beautiful anticipation of will they ever win would never be back and that was enough to make it no longer exciting. This is a prime example of the anticipation and enjoyment of wishing and hoping that something will happen was just as enjoyable as the event itself.
So what is my lesson here? To know that happiness is fleeting, that wishing and dreaming are good things but to not get caught up in thinking that once the things I wish for come true, I will find real, true happiness. That goals are important but not the end all, be all of life. Is perfectly ok to feel content with the present moment as messy as it may be and in fact absolutely necessary for happiness.
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