Life and Love

This is my first post for this blog. Actually, this is my first blog! Why, you may ask, am I telling you this? Well, I’m telling you this because writing makes me happy AND, for reasons of my own, I’m currently preoccupied with the idea of happiness and whether or not it’s actually attainable.

I suppose that I should first admit that happiness is not a subject I have any authority on whatsoever. I do, however, have much experience in the pursuit of said subject. I’m in my 39th year and for the first time in my life I think I’m getting a bit closer to actually understanding happiness and why it seems so unattainable.

Growing up I believed that happiness was something you sought after and, once found, you’d carry with you from that moment on. I believed in the fairy tales where the heroine faces the dark evil and finds love and happiness to last the rest of her days. Sadly, I didn’t stop believing (at my core) that fairy tales could actually come true until quite recently. I did believe that they were hard to come by, but, ultimately, still reachable.

Most people face hardships and trials and tribulations and such… some face more than others. What I’ve come to realize is that happiness isn’t an “end product” that you can work toward or miraculously find one day when you’re not actually looking for it. Happiness is a joyous or sweet contentment that comes to us in moments. The frequency and length of those moments depend on several things - the people involved and their perspective on life; the consequences of choices past and present; the whims of others near and not so near; and, ultimately, chance.

I think that when it comes right down to it, happiness is a choice we make regardless of our circumstances. Maybe you won’t experience perfect happiness, but you will experience moments of feeling and being happy. For instance, my life is not picture perfect at the moment. I’m 39, divorced, overweight, and, despite having two university degrees, I’m still unemployed. The last two years have brought new levels of pain and sadness that I’d never dreamed possible, but, at the same time, they’ve also brought moments of happiness that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

I’ve discovered through pain of circumstance, as many do, that sometimes we have to make our own happiness. So, what made me happy today? For starters, my daughter Sydney came home from her Dad’s this morning and I was able to walk her to school on this beautiful sunny day. Right now, I’m writing and as I said earlier, writing makes me happy. Later today I will be having dinner with my three favourite people in the world - my daughters, Mackenzie and Sydney, and my boyfriend, James.

I should also state for the record that I realize that saying that we can choose to be happy despite our circumstances is sometimes easier said than done. There have been days, months and years when I was just unhappy. This past year has brought months of sadness I didn’t think I’d survive. There were moments during those months that should have been happy, but I couldn’t see past the fog of sadness to actually recognize let alone embrace them for the tiny jewels they were.  I’m fairly certain that I was in a depression brought on by circumstance. I think that it is important to recognize when depression hits because finding happiness in the ordinary moments becomes almost impossible when it does. Ironically, this is the time when we most need to find the happiness or the hope of happiness… when it seems impossible and unattainable.

With that being said, I’m still left with one big question: “Are the moments of happiness we find in life worth the many hardships we face in actually living life?” Does it matter?

 Perhaps life isn’t or shouldn’t be about finding happiness. Perhaps happiness is just a lucky perk we get for actually taking on the challenge of living our lives as best we can.