Whimsy

A few days back, someone I quite respect said he reads my blogs which was nice to hear. But then he added that I write bleak things and I should use my writing skills to write something positive and, if possible, funny.

I did tell him my sense of humour is more macabre than cute but let’s try for a positive piece. I do enjoy a good challenge. Plus I was named Miss Sunshine in my last year of high school. That has to count.

There is a lot of bad in the world. But also there’s a lot of good. The trick is to not dwell on the bad. And by this, I do firmly mean being slightly delusional intentionally to focus on the good. There is even a Bible verse on this that says: He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous¹. I find this deeply comforting. Life is a mixture of good and bad things. And everything is relative.

My life, too, if I muse on it, has been a salad bowl of fun and woe, of mirth and sorrow, of anxiety and hope, of joy and anger… so many things. And I’ve taken a gamble on a lot of things that have sometimes yielded results that I liked. I don’t like regretting things. Even the risks I’ve taken that have not ended happily have been memorable lessons and sometimes, experiences I cherish, even though those happiness have been long gone.

You can’t live life and expect to be happy when you can’t be your authentic self. A lot of times, you find yourself blaming other people for the unhappiness in your life, the stress and tension, the poverty and the misery. You can never expect all the people you meet to be good. Sometimes you just have to move past. And if you’re lucky to find people with whom you can be your genuine self, you are luckier than most.

Some families and relatives are not good. Some friends turn against you. Significant Others may betray you. Sometimes people you don’t even know will cause you pain. You can’t dwell on that. Allow yourself to hurt. And then you heal. I don’t even think there is a formula for healing from trauma.

But sometimes you are just that lucky to have family that supports you. You have friends that laugh with and howl at the moon with you. You find someone to kiss you and battle Life with you. You find strangers that will offer you food and gossip while you wait for a bus to arrive.

Life is a series of whimsy. Best to just enjoy it.

¹ Matthew 5:45 NIV

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.