The Unbearable Lightness of...Happiness
Talking about resolution, a lot of time it revolves around happiness. For some people it's a simple thing (and why bother to talk about it, so they say). But for a complicated and scattered brain like me, sometimes to talk about nonsense thing like happiness is just a bliss of its own. ;)
Happiness is a relative subject--Happiness for me may not be happiness for you--and this, everyone (should) agree. A suicide bomber would have in their heads, that they would get the 'river flowing with milk and honey' and the 20 maidens in the 'promised' heaven. In this case, happiness, for the suicide bombers are defined by these promises. Ok you're not a suicide bomber but point is, you can also ask yourself, what are the promises of happiness that you're expecting ? You can as well define the abstract concept as you like. Us Indonesians hail to the glory of this, of instance:
Muda Kaya Raya, Tua foya foya, Mati masuk surga
(roughly translated to Young living rich, Old living in luxury, and to go to heaven when you die)
(roughly translated to Young living rich, Old living in luxury, and to go to heaven when you die)
Nonetheless, people want to be happy--and seems like they have the idea of what happiness is. Asking "what do you want in life", more often than not i would get the answer "I want to be happy". Maybe it's not your answer, but I hear this pretty a lot. For me, I just never understand this answer. I, have witnessed (too many times) that those who seems to have everything, are not happy, and those, who seemingly have nothing, are just radiant with happiness. This subjectivity of happiness is making me oblivious on how the Bhutan's Index of Happiness would work in any sense. So what constitutes happiness. Your Happiness? Those people who say "I want to be Happy"--what are they actually waiting for? How do happiness operate?
The Illusion (?)..
Only kids believe in the overly repeated Disney princesses tales' endings "...and they live happily ever after..". We are adult enough to understand that there's no such thing as "live happily ever after". Dear mate, Shit happens, with little s and big S, all kinds of it. We're shoveled dirts, all kinds of dirts all of our life. But what matters is, whether we use the accumulating dirt as a stepping stone, letting ourselves being buried by it, or *to quote the very cliche* "to turn it into a pearl"?.
It is not to say that I'm everytime Happy, I am not. Happiness can be easy (of course, when your loved one says 'I love you' or when you get a scholarship, a raise and promotion, or when you stroll in the park seeing the leaves falling,etc), but I'm here talking not about the intermittent Joy(s). Life is served to us like ocean tides, one after another. Along the journey, we pass through many ebbs and tides--*well, Indeed I tend to choose to sail in rougher sea. Calm sea is ...lame, right? *?. ...When you are at the top of the tide you are in bliss but when you are at the bottom, you know, pain-confusion-sorrow...emptiness. It is at these time when happiness is not readily available, that we need to ignite a process in our mind that force us to say that 'It's fine. I'm content, let's see how this goes'. It is this process and here, let me try to dissolve its articulation (at least in my own head), for me and for you.
Fear of Happiness
To talk about the paradoxical point-of-view in seeing things, fear of happiness do exist. Some people say that it's a subset of depression, and probably as well, a subset of fearing to feel pain. I have this kind of fear from time to time--although more tending to the latter reasoning. Or to better define the feeling, for me it's more of a 'fear to utopism'. Whenever things go too good to be true--I am becoming wary, of what (pitfall) might comes next.
However, overtime I have trained my mind to worry less and less about what might lie behind the green valley. Afterall, why would I want to be off-tuned with the feeling of joy, or sorrow? For this, I may have to be ready to have blisters in my heart, but is not a sorrow here,now and later worth the joy the other time? I have found worrying (that things will go awry or too swell to be true) to be the nastiest ghost of our mind. Whether your worry or not worry- does not change ANYthing. At the same time, I think we can keep a healthy dose of 'fear of happiness', for the sake of humility.
Idealisation
The other frequently visiting ghost is a sense of expectation, or more precisely, idealisation. This as well I strive to avoid (I say strive, as it is indeed hard to let our expections go!). As much as I can, I try to live as how it is, now--at this moment. A lot of people say that I lack of envisioning. I wouldn't say I'm not visioning, or sort to say, expecting (for 3, 5 years to come)--I do. But when life brings me to different things that I wanted, there's the option of your getting down because of it, try to get back where you were heading; or you can choose to make new life scenarios ahead, with the new starting point. And I choose the very latter, with a bit of the second one.
Maybe to imagine life as a rolling tide (as in stormy weather in the vast sea) is just too dark. I like to imagine life as a rolling hills or as unfolding dots. Dots of peaks of rolling hills ahead of you. At times you vision dots--as fas as the eye can see. We see vision dots as bigger dots--let's call it Big Dot (see 1). But we all know life takes it tiny steps forward, not a leap and we can only see life as much far ahead--not too far. By each step, dot by dot revealed as time goes by.
 |
| Life as rolling hills and unfolding dots ahead |
What you don't usually realise in the beginning is that, in order to get to your Big Dot, the path is not as easy as it seemed. It may require multiple (other) factors and a lot of times, 'coincidences', for you to work your way there. You may need to bounce left and right (see 2). And even, at times, you actually believed that you've strayed away from your Big Dot, but in the end, ends there anyway (suprise green lines at 3). I myself believe in making Big Dot and somehow life has guided me across my several Big Dots. That moment, when the green surprise line is just popping out of nowhere, that leads you back to your big dot, are always great surprise, miraculous moment. And when I think I have gone too far from the Big Dot, I'll just sail along. I'll just believe that there's still the Big Dot or even a Bigger Dot awaiting me (see 4).
What I don't stop doing, is doing whatever best on the things that I like doing with whatever dots I have at the moment. This way you'll never regret later on, or to complain at the point being, either. At some point, I would turn back and make connections, make meanings and hopeful thinking--not to think that "This must lead me to point X", but "This must mean something later, and maybe it ll involve point X". Or, actually a simple "Whatever" attitude as well helps!, as remember you make one Big Dot after another. Who knows that the connection will only appear 10 years from now, not 5? A friend reminded herself over a lunch the other day "I need to know what I want in life". I seldom question myself the same thing, in fact I am actually more concerned about knowing what I like to do. and whether I am doing what I like to do--that brings me joy most of the time than not.
Hence for me,
happinesss is more than to accept (nrimo/pasrah, Que sera sera, red) ; it's an incessant brain and
heart exercise that involves fine-tuning the ebbs and the tides, finding connections. Happiness, for me, is finding meanings. So, If I'm asked the question : Where to find
Happiness? For me it's everywhere and it can even be almost anytime, IF you
cultivate it. Even in the dimmest time of my life, there can be meanings that may not be obvious at the time,
there can be a lifetime lessons ready for us to cultivate--probably soon or in 5 years, OR it may as well
only serve as sheer mellow nostalgic archive that we can rekindle to, anytime
in our future. (Ain't being mellow and nostalgic great in rainy days, sometimes? me like it XD ). For any
sorrow, any broken hearted, any tears, sweats and blood, someday, all these will make sense. As I believe, we cannot
ever appreciate Happiness if we have never felt any sorrow. we would never feel grateful if we never have lost anything in our life.
Even, as weird as it
sounds, sometimes I feel happy when I'm in sorrow as I know I'll jolt higher
later on, hopefully soon than later; I feel
happy that I'm given challenges and trials so that I can learn and be better; ...I can go on and on about this but more to
think about this, the less I see reasons to be unhappy.
These above are all
forces from within. There are as well, forces that are attained through our
relationship with people we care surrounding us. and With all humans in general. Relationships that renders you to be totally egoistic when you're unhappy. Bluntly speaking, I think you never deserve to be unhappy. I
will share my ponder on this another time.
To be happy is not to wait nor to pursue. It is to decide.
Happy happy happy. I share wonderful video made by the funky Laussanois (o missss that city), on Pharell Williams' Happy. Good Weekend and happy sailing in 2014!
Reading again my posts from earlier years (I've had this blog since 2006! wham I'm suddenly old !), my mind seems to mold itself slooooowwwly to its current state. Adding one layer of synapsis with another. I have posted something about fear of happiness experience here ; about..not to be worried about what lies ahead of us, and be pleasently surprised by life!, here; about being happy for little things, here. Am I just reiterating myself? reiterating and refining bit by bit, hopefully. :)
