Scribbles on 'happiness'

What happiness means to me.

Happiness is..

A warming. A spark of light. Ambiguous. Transient. Pressured. A place, not a destination.

In order to gather any sense of anything in this extraordinary world, we must first have contrast. It is embedded within our language, the words we speak, the people we meet, the news stories we weep. In order to get a glimpse of understanding happy, we must experience everything but happiness.

When I think of ‘happiness’, I visualise it as if it is on an emotional map, with unrefined borders and endless, but unclear, routes to and from. It is somewhere we can go, but like all emotional places, we can’t stay for long. It’s not how our brains are wired. In fact, I’m unsure if we are ever solely at one emotional place at once. Instead, we live on the outskirts of bordering emotions and at times, complete crossroads. For example, today I feel a little stressed with the week ahead, tired, yet motivated, a smidge anxious, but also grateful and relieved to be putting my thoughts somewhere. The only exception to the idea that you can’t have all your eggs in one emotion, for me, is within panic attacks. In their very nature, you go there fully, you’re given no option not to. It is an all-in or all-out situation. You can be on the border, but if you are taken across it, it must run its course.

Then, we have grief. This is not a place. This is the weather. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it pours. Sometimes the sun is gleefully shining, though there are always clouds somewhere, even if there are times when they cannot be consciously seen. Sometimes, it sweeps through everything, picking up speed and momentum, taking memories and emotion, winding into an explosive tornado. In time, exhausted with all it is carrying, it loses energy and places what it had taken back to settle, but not to stay. Another poignant date in the calendar, perhaps an anniversary, a glimpse of a photograph, something someone has said in passing, a storm from seemingly nowhere, and it can all sweep through again.

I have to be honest with you, I’m not sure that I believe in ‘happiness’ in a literal sense. I can however, view that perhaps ‘happiness’ is actually an umbrella term, but not an actual state itself. For example, feelings of contentment, relaxation, joy, love, pride, passion… I associate all with positive states. In this sense, ‘happiness’ is a generalised term for any time when negative responses aren’t the protagonist of that moment.

But then, are there really ‘negative’ feelings, if all feelings are necessary? Grief, panic, anger, sadness, disappointment, worry… they are uncomfortable, but they serve a valuable purpose. They more than earn their seat at our tables. However, feeling these on a bad day, a bad week or even longer… if it is allowing you to process and feel what you need, is it negative? I don’t have the answers. Let me stress that I am not referring to mental illness here. A mental illness is not a feeling.

My biggest bug bear with the idea of ‘happiness’, is that it is often sold that if you do or once you do X, Y and Z, you will be happy, as if a permanent state, a gateway to eternal bliss. In a traditional sense, this is laid out on the table as a well earning job, owning a house, being married and having kids *inserts eye roll here*. But that is just not the life we live. It’s not how the world works. Even if it was, if you never experienced anything else but ‘happiness’, what would that even mean? How would that feel? I don’t know.

When I see or hear those generic catch phrases and ‘iNsPiRaTiOnAl’ slogans around happiness, a small piece of me dies inside (or is at least fractured). ‘Be happy’ (embellished with random flowers or something of the same kind). Wow. Thanks Amy from 2007, I am suddenly transported to a tropical mental paradise. Truly life changing.

It’s simplistic, it’s vague, it’s pressured.

Must. Be Happy.

Frankly, I tell that mindset to (not even kindly) fuck off. Instead of feeling like I should be aiming for this mythical place of permanent joy, I simply just aim to see the good in each day. The sparks of light. Even on the absolute worst days, the days that I think it surely cannot get worse than this, I can see even the tiniest of light. Perhaps that first smile to appear after someone’s been crying, accidentally finding something you thought you’d lost, making your toast just right, getting the last lot of alright-looking bananas in the supermarket… we are truly surrounded by them and too often we do not notice.

We do not need to actively seek out this franchised idea of happiness, because there is always a bit of gold right where we are. I do not search for happiness, when there are already countless sparks of light all around me, here, now. As I write this, the sun is setting, and regardless of what has happened today, it will always rise again tomorrow.