Frankly Put: Are You Happy or Just Deflecting?
If you could write a letter to happiness, what would your first sentence be? Would it be a greeting or would the conversation flow like it never stopped? Would it be warm or would it be prodding? If happiness was a person, what would your relationship with them be?
I have asked myself all these questions in a bid to try and change how I see “being happy” as a concept. Like is there some new way to look at it that would shed some light and show me things I have yet to see? Am I destined to forever see happiness as the destination and life as the treacherous journey to it? I don’t think I’d want to anymore.
I call to mind a period in time when if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would sheepishly say, “Happy.” As cliche and probably cringe as it sounds, I don’t think I see too much of a fault in the wish even right now. Perhaps, I was alone in the direct expression of it or I only saw it as such. I mean, if it is truly to be looked into, I suppose happiness is the end goal for any passion or profession any child puts in as the answer to the question.
I don’t think anyone wants to be miserable in future, let alone a child looking ahead in naivete. To entertain the possibility of such is an interesting way to play devil’s advocate but allow me not to this time. It does beg the question though if misery loves company, does happiness thrive in the lonesome? And if I were to end up alone when I grew up, would I still be happy in that lonesome?
I ask myself what makes me happy. Maybe, just maybe, if I could list down all the things that make me happy and revisit them come 10 years, I’d be able to confine my future happiness to the constraints of childhood wonder. Which isn’t so bad but life happens and adulting being the slap in the face that it is, readjusts perspectives very fast. No questions asked. Which makes it even odder, the realizations I have been having.
In the list of things that have piqued my interest, I have found it is less of the actual thing on the list, and more the fundamental of it. I’ve grown into different excitements and thrills but the essence always seems to remain. So what makes me happy? Whatever makes my inner child happy. I know, bit of a bland general answer but if you were expecting a list… you would be expecting too much.
It is crazy that I am finding, with every theme I begin to write on every month, there seems to be a shift in my life and a lot of things lean towards that theme. Perhaps it is some Baader-Meinhof phenomenon — the illusion of frequency like buying shoes and seeing them everywhere — a type of thing where I am having a lot of conversation around being happy, I am consuming content around being happy, I am listening to “happy” music all because this is the theme I am exploring.
I ask myself if I am happy or am I just deflecting? I can acknowledge that this doesn’t feel like the happiness I know. Though, there is peace here. There is calm in my soul. Then again, there is calm in my soul almost 24/7 now. I remember listening to the song ‘Dear Happy’ by dodie and feeling some form of doubt in the presence of happiness in my life. Like I was faking a lot of the times when I said I was genuinely happy.
It was almost as if I saw my happiness as the way I felt that one time with that one person and nothing else if not that. Admittedly, it was a gauge benchmark I’d use to trace back to the description of what happiness felt like. Not that there is any wrong in acknowledging that a point in time was a great experience of joy, it’s just that, it sucked that it seemed like that joy was to never rear its head around again in my life.
I had an epiphany though, they never made me happy. They offered me the space to face the feeling head-on and challenge the things that were taking away joy in my life. I wonder, how come I so easily deflected and faked a smile saying “I am happy?” Did I only bury the availability of that space in that relationship and thus bond my experience of happiness to it? Perhaps. I don’t think I ever gave myself that space.
It took sitting myself down after a day of warmth and laughter to realise that, there had been days that felt “happy” but it was just deflecting because at the end of the day I was so miserable. I took “positive vibes” wrapped them around my neck and choked out any possible argument otherwise. On the other hand, there were days when I would go without a smile or laugh and I felt truly happy but I convinced myself that unless I was laughing and smiling I was not happy.
Now I listen to the song and I can’t seem to find the doubt that was once there. I think back to the times that felt remotely happy and found their ties in me and not necessarily in the people, actions or places. So, perhaps happiness loves the lonesome. The lonesome that allows you to be happy. That allows you to choose to be happy.
Happiness is not happiness if it must be forced in the company of people. Happiness may not be happiness if it is contaminated with doubt as to what it is. I suppose we must learn to meet ourselves where our happiness exists and accept what it looks like. If ever there is a moment of doubt one must ask self, “Are you happy or are you deflecting?”
If I were to write a letter to happiness, I think I’d mail an empty sheet of paper. Maybe one day, I’ll have the words for it but for now… Well… To put it Frankly.
