Happiness

My innermost circle tends not to be absolutist. We tend to float through life shrugging off most things with ‘it is what it is’. Even with happiness. 

I don’t think we think of happiness in terms of ever-after. We accept it as a series of sporadic events, if we are lucky enough. In all the years I’ve interacted with the people closest to me, I don’t remember wishful thinkings along the lines of: if I have this, I’ll be happy; if I have that, I'll be good.

My circle tends to measure happiness more on the lines of stress levels. Less is good, more is bad. Sometimes, we are not even happy, per se, but less anxious. We can be utterly miserable, but not exactly anxious. We will take that too. It doesn’t even seem like we ever have that hope that something will lead to our “happiness”. We seem to be very accepting of that.

I’ve known some Christians who believe in suffering. Our old pastor would often chastise us saying we are so ready to suffer with Jesus during Good Friday but we can’t seem to revel in the glory of Easter and its promise. I like that. But this Non-Belief of Happiness is more puritanical. Ours is just resigned acceptance.

This POV is probably less positive in the sense HR people might mean it, but also, I believe, more positive in the sense of realism. In the sense that we don’t chase it. If we experience bouts of happiness, we enjoy it, but we also know it can’t last. And more importantly, we know we didn’t “achieve” it. Per se.

I feel like a lot of people chase happiness like if I get married I’ll be happy, if I have a kid I’ll be happy, if I have a job I’ll be happy, if I get posted in XYZ, I’ll be happy... But I don’t think happiness comes when it is considered the end goal. Besides, it is ephemeral so if it comes it comes. So just enjoy it if it does.

You can buy a book and be happy for 5 minutes. That counts! Happiness can’t be an endless orgasm that lasts for all times. I feel like this belief takes some bit of pressure off of the universe. Just like I hope (fervently) that unhappiness is not an ever after deal, I hope the same for happiness too. You can’t have one without the other. It might sound like I’m trying to score brownie points with the Universe. But anything I can do to ease up on the karmic shit, no?

Very obviously, some people have more of the happiness than the opposite. They just walk in the light I guess but they are the exception. For most people, it’s a mix of both, more so the bad side for some.

Over the years, we have been gaslit to believe that money does not bring or can buy happiness. I fervently beg to differ. Because if you can cover your expenses, and a little treat now and then, then yes of course, money buys happiness. Some people would argue that these are just short-term or whatever, but if you can do all of those, it really lessens up on the anxiety and that is always beneficial to mental health. It’s just dumb rich people who don’t know how good they have it that start this nonsense. It is so normal for them to have money to pay bills and such that they have absolutely taken it for granted and think it’s the same for everyone. Try being depressed and poor. Then we shall see if you really think money doesn’t bring happiness. 

Miller of the effing Dee, my ass.

Again, we’re not talking happiness ever after; just happiness for some time. Nothing brings foolproof happiness. Everything is comparative. But when you can’t even make ends meet, it stops being relative. You can’t go to a person struggling to stay afloat and tell them money does not buy happiness.

So! While I do not delude myself into thinking it will bring me happiness, I do have a list of things that I believe will lessen my stress level at the moment. One of them is to have enough money to buy my very own Jimny.

Ah, money, the root cause of all my unhappiness. The lack of it, I mean.