Tuesday 13 December 2016

Happiness

Happiness is just an occasional episode in the general drama of pain. I have been using Thomas Hardy's brilliance since college. I throw the line at people when they ask me if I am happy. It's easier than explaining that I don't really understand happiness. For me happiness is me smiling without effort. After living with clinical depression, any time that I don't feel like just spontaneously combusting is happiness for me.
My therapist told me he chooses to be happy. I smiled. I also wondered if we could choose to be a koala bear, but that's a different headspace for another time. Back to the ever mind boggling concept of happiness and the pursuit of it. I never understood why we would have to pursue happiness. Shouldn't it be easy? Shouldn't it just be there? Shouldn't it just accompany you everywhere sticking to you like that lone long hair stuck between your butt cheeks?
"Are you happy? ", the man child asks me in the morning. I hesitate. He changes the question," Are you in a better place than yesterday? ". I smile." Yes. Better than yesterday". I go on to tell him in the same breath that I am worried about my stupid money not being credited in my stupid bank account and that the stupid bank people are not responding. Then I tell him I am still hurt by what a friend said which is why I was unhappy in the first place yesterday. I stop. I look at him and smile. "Other than that, yeah, I am doing way better than yesterday."
That's it. My happiness is transient like my days and hours and minutes. Ask me on any particular day if I am happy and I will have to go through the motions of thinking if I am feeling like I should just stop existing. If I am not, then yes sir, I am very happy. Today I woke up without wanting to sleep for the rest of the day. Yes siree I am happy. Today I smiled looking at the drizzly calm greenery of the city. Yes ma'am I'm happy. Today I did not sigh and think of all the ways I am not going to make it in life. Yes sweetheart I am happy.
So you see I find happiness in not feeling like shit. It is in fact just like the occasional hair I find stuck between my butt cheeks after a bath.

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