Happiness

We were given weird surveys to take as high school students. I’m not sure those would pass muster today. What crime would you most likely commit? I don’t know, kidnapping the driver of a Bugati for an afternoon of mimosas and touring olive groves? No, that wasn’t the answer I gave, but if I could chat with my younger self, that’s probably what I’d tell her. What do you hope most to be when you’re older? Happy, I wrote. Happy. I suspect that’s because I lived in a home that wasn’t. I wasn’t. They weren’t. Good thing a little life experience and hard-earned wisdom has taught me something different.

I like happiness. I am grateful for happiness when it shows up. I like to share moments of happiness. It’s simply not realistic to be happy all the time and anyone telling you otherwise is probably selling you something. If we can achieve x or y, THEN we’ll be happy. Happiness is just around the corner. Around the bend. Maybe a little more money. Maybe if we lived somewhere else. Maybe if I had everything I ever wanted right at my fingertips, maybe then I can be happy. And getting around that next bend, never really seems to happen. I think of the characters from Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy once they take GLeeMONEX and how tragic they truly are. I used to think if I wasn’t happy, I was sad. If I wasn’t happy, I was angry. If I wasn’t happy, I was depressed. I’ve vaguely known, but in the last year I’ve known on a cellular level that it’s possible to be happy and soul-wrenchingly sorrowful. I can be happy and sad and angry and afraid all at the same time.

Happiness isn’t my goal. Love. The fullness of life. The human experience. Gratitude. Deliberate decisions about love and joy. Those are my goals. Happiness will inevitably be a part of that. I’m thankful for that too. But I don’t chase it like a junkie looking for the next hit and invariably being disappointed because it wasn’t enough or didn’t look like I imagined. Knowing love and being human means tragedy, sorrow, heartache, fury, fear are as ever-present and possible as happiness.

I am grateful for happiness, but I’m under no illusion that it’s the only emotion worth having. I am also thankful for anger because it points me toward righting wrongs and solving injustices. I am thankful for fear because it’s my body and mind warning me to protect itself–that is survival and a will to live and it’s remarkable too. I am thankful for guilt because it tells me I need to and can do better and that I’m not perfect. I am thankful for pain because it teaches me compassion. And I am thankful for every single stabbing ounce of grief because it reminds me just how much love I have.

[Virtual tip jar: https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Lubbers-1]