Thoughts on Happiness

I had a very good week this week and if it hadn't have been for some Argentinean energy company going through some sort of financial trouble it would've been damn near perfect. (There's no need for me to explain the Argentinean connection, just trust me on it). Why was it so good? Well, because I was happy - very happy? Why was I happy? Well, in short, because an area of my life that I've been stressing about for a while now is beginning to turn around for the better. Maybe this is only a temporary thing and eventually--or even perhaps quite soon--the euphoria will die off, but whatever. That's not the point.

Since I've been so happy this week, I decided to write a few words on happiness. Now, I don't pretend to offer any secret to happiness. I don't have any particular insight that probably hasn't already been popularized in some self-help book somewhere into what makes human beings truly happy. I decided to write about this because I've been sort of obsessed with the idea of happiness lately.

There are several possible explanations for this fascination. It could be because I'm 23 and going through some sort of quarter-life crisis and I don't really know what I want to do with my life and I'm stressed about money, my career, finding an apartment that I can settle into, my love life, my friendships, my family, and a number of other things.

It could be because I live in New York City and people in New York City seem obsessed with the idea of happiness--or maybe it's mostly balance their seeking. The city is a stressful place. Unless you're born and raised here, you don't come to New York unless you really want to make something of yourself. I once read something by someone (I can't remember who) that said "No one moves to New York just to get by." So true. So, there's a lot of pressure on New Yorkers to either make it big or go back to Podunktown where they came from. Plus, everyone seems so fabulous. I always feel like I have uglier clothes, a crappier apartment, a lower salary, a more pathetic social circle, and worse taste than anyone I meet in this town. And of course, the pressure to focus on your career butts heads with the pressure to get married, have a family, and be all cozy and in love for the rest of your life (or something). This is also something I struggle with as a young woman in a post-feminism society. There's always that feeling that if I get married, or, more importantly, if I decide to have children, that I will ultimately have to sacrifice part of my career and professional life to do it. You can't have both all the way. You have to choose. This idea just seems to be exacerbated by the aura of New York, and I also think that in this city, men feel the same way too...well, some of them.

Or maybe I have this obsession because I dated a clinically depressed person for seven months this year. He and I talked a lot about happiness and the struggle to be happy. I used to tell him he could choose to be happy (or, maybe I just told myself that) - that he could either wallow by himself all day or he could choose to do things he knew would make him happy. The problem was, he never chose these things, and since I stopped seeing him I've noticed a lot of those behaviors in myself. Granted, it's not generally that easy to have a healthy perspective on things right after a breakup, so I give myself leeway on that. I would wake up on a Saturday morning and think that the only thing I wanted to do was stay in my apartment, in my pajamas, and watch some sappy movie all day. I would have to will myself out of bed and force myself to leave my apartment. Friends would invite me out, and I would force myself to say yes because I knew that all I had to do was choose to do what I knew would make me happy. And guess what, I always ended up being really happy I did.

I could also be obsessed with happiness because of my general inability to just be happy. Sure, I consider myself a happy person in general. I'm fairly optimistic about life. I try to put my life into perspective (it could always be worse, and in general, I have it pretty good). I try to tell myself that things will work out and, in my experience, they generally do. My problem is, until they do work themselves out, I always worry about worst-case scenarios. What if I lose my job? What if I can't find an apartment before February 1? What if this date is horrible and I got myself excited about nothing? What if there's a sick passenger on the subway and I get stuck underground on the L train when I have to pee? What if the apocalypse comes tomorrow and the Southern Baptists are right about everything after all?

Good gravy. I need to calm down because, as ridiculous as some of those things sound, those are all thoughts that have passed through my mind sometime this week - even if just fleetingly. Thanks to having read American Psycho a couple of months ago, I also had the following thought this past Wednesday evening: "What if this guy is like Patrick Bateman and kills me right here in Central Park?" (He didn't. Obviously.)

I've also been thinking about happiness because of my mother. She called me earlier this week and told me she'd visited the doctor the day before. She had taken my mom's blood pressure, which was higher than it ought to be. The doctor asked my mom if she'd been under stress lately. My mom immediately started crying.

I feel badly for her. I know the feeling. I can sympathize to a certain extent, but I feel really badly for her. I want my mom to be happy.

So how does one become happy? Well there are several things that make me happy: love, friendship, dancing, reading a good book, meeting someone new and interesting, the prospect of experiencing something you've never experienced before but have always wanted to try, a good meal, a good night's sleep, yoga, finding a book, movie, song, or other work of art that speaks to you, knowing you did a good job on something and getting recognized for it.

These are just a handful, but what I've come to find is that I'm happiest when I'm completely free of worry - either because something that I had been worrying about has been resolved or because I'm so content being in the moment I'm in, the future seems to melt away. That's the real reason I was so happy this week - I was experiencing something that made me really excited and happy in the moment, and I forgot about all of those other things I'd been worried about. This didn't mean I stopped caring - I still thought about those things, but I was merely able to tell myself "it's all going to be alright."

Sometimes I wish I was more religious. That may sound strange, but I do. I believe that faith is a powerful thing and I wish I had some sort of unshakable faith in something larger than me. I keep telling myself that none of the stuff you worry about in life matters anyway because eventually you're just going to be dead, so who cares? But that's only comforting to a certain extent because then you can slip into feeling depressed because your life has no value or meaning. I don't feel this way. I'm just saying. Some people think that religion is stupid. I can see where they're coming from, but I don't agree with them. I don't believe there is anything wrong with having faith it something you cannot see. The only problem comes when you start to impose it on others.

So, those are my thoughts. However incoherent. I suppose I could write more, but my apartment is freezing cold and my hands are starting to stiffen. Plus, I'm forcing myself to get out of the house. I think, right now, that would make me happy.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Brooke

p.s. I learned how to say Merry Christmas in Welsh, so Nadolig Llawen!