The Peanuts say that Happiness is either a warm puppy, a warm blanket, or being one of the gang.
The Beatles insist Happiness is a Warm Gun - clearly cold things don't make you happy.
Happiness is a choice. Happiness is a journey. Happiness is like a butterfly.
Even the Declaration of Independence talks about happiness and sets forth the idea that we have been endowed by our creator with the unalienable right to pursue happiness. Note, we aren't guaranteed happiness, just the freedom to pursue it. I used to wonder if I would constantly pursue happiness but always be eluded by it. I was unhappy with a lot of things for a long time.
I found happiness this year, in abundance. I was happy with myself and my life and the people I was surrounded by. Happier than I could remember being. I looked forward to every day. I was happy to be alive. I didn't dread work. I was sleeping well.
It's difficult to not correlate happiness with circumstance. All things being equal, if you stand back and look at your life and can clearly see that before this dot on the timeline your circumstance was one way and you weren't happy and after this dot your circumstance was another way and you were happy, how can you not connect the two? All of the factors that shape the circumstance in which you found yourself happy start to become your basis for what happiness is. They become the essentials for happiness. You believe if you don't have them you will no longer be happy. You weren't happy before you had them, so it stands to reason that you won't be happy if you lose them. Your happiness becomes wrapped up in your circumstance.
Any number of things can make someone happy, and everyone has a different litmus test for happiness. Being rich and famous, getting married, having a good job, being healthy, being spiritually sound, having a nice car, realizing your self worth... "If only X,Y,Z were present in my life, then I would be truly happy." You look at others who have your essential happiness ingredients, envious, and wonder why they aren't happy if they have what it takes to make them so? But maybe what would make you happy isn't enough for that other person...maybe not that it's not enough, it's just not the right thing.
Maybe happiness is like baking, or chemistry. It requires just the right formula or mix of ingredients. Any small deviance can throw the whole thing off. So you're out of vanilla extract - won't almond extract work just as well? Not quite. Substituting a similar ingredient for the one you really need might get you a similar product, but it won't be the same. If you're expecting what you're used to, you'll just end up disappointed. I've had chocolate chip cookies made with almond extract...bizarre.
I've realized in the last week or so that I've been trying to bake with almond extract. I've been striving to recreate my happiness with different ingredients to no avail. I'm beginning to think that it's not possible because I've been going about happiness in all the wrong ways. I haven't been very happy lately and I've been thinking that I won't be happy again unless things are the way they were before. Maybe, happiness isn't tied to circumstance, and it's not like baking, and it's not a once-in-a-lifetime thing that can only happen if all the planets are perfectly aligned.
I've been told before that you can be as happy or as miserable as you want to be. If you're dead set that you can't possibly be happy in any given situation, then it will be impossible. Even though I had been warned against it, I have been living in the land of what used to be for the last few months, longing to get my happiness back. Hanging on, white knuckled, with everything I have in me. Trying desperately to eek out every bit of happy I can pull from the other side only to end up feeling unfulfilled and sad. I think it may be time to loosen my grip, which also makes me sad. I don't want to leave everything behind, but hanging on so tightly makes it difficult to move on and find happiness again. And it scares me.I don't want to forget and I don't want to be forgotten, but inevitably life moves on for everyone and it's hard to see it go on without you. It's hard to miss out on things and think, if things were different I would be there too. But I also realize that if I only wish to be somewhere else, I could be missing out on my life here too, and maybe I'm not giving here enough of a fair chance to make me happy.
Maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit for my role in this whole happiness equation. Maybe it wasn't only the people and places and circumstance that created my happiness. A lot of things in my life changed to make me happy, and I had a lot of help, but ultimately I was the one who had to make the changes. I'm not the girl that I was before the dot on the timeline any more. I'm much stronger and all of the things that happened and the people that I met helped me get here. I guess that the world has presented me with the opportunity to prove it. To stand on my own two feet and fly with my own wings and take charge of my happiness and I just haven't been trying hard enough.
No one promised this journey would be easy, but I know that it will definitely be worth it.
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