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.

Work And Wealth: A Cynic's View?

I quote Dolly Parton here: "I would never retire. I’ll just hopefully drop dead in the middle of a song on stage someday."

I suppose I’m happy for her because it’s like that whole Soft Skills HR class thing where your mentor tells you to find something you like doing and then you “never have to work a day in your life”. Unfortunately, I might be the opposite of that. Well, not quite. But getting close.

My gripe is that while I don’t hate my job, and I truly and definitely enjoy a huge chunk of it, I think it would be so much more “fun” if I didn’t have to worry about money. I know for a fact I would enjoy my work a 100% more if I had the option to quit. I think the security of knowing that you can quit anytime makes everything so much more tolerable. Even work. If it is not about the money then you can be all: oh I'm learning so much from this and shit like that.

Plus if it's not about the money, you can actually work at different kinds of jobs. It really boils down to the option of it all. Because there are a ton of really low paying shit that’s fun. Like try your hand out at home baking for 3 months – do home delivery yourself and go out in a pretty scooter, wear flowey pastels and flowers and hand out your freshly baked food with cutesy hand written notes. Run a loss, who cares? Huge loss? Just quit, without having suffered financial pain. Or run a bookshop filled with the kind of books you like for the sheer aesthetic of it all – with dramatic cozy lighting, a coffee table set with cushy leather chairs, and a huge ass window. You could even be picky with the people who go home with your books, which you maybe wrap up in nice brown paper and ribbons. Why wouldn’t I want to go work at my bookshop every day if I wasn’t worried about money? Or you could wander the Amazon searching for a rare poppy or an orchid or an anaconda I don't know. Or sit at a table by the window overlooking a Shire-like countryside, with kitschy furniture, a pot of coffee or tea by your side, working on a book, spinning a tall tale, weaving magic with the written word, perhaps fighting or befriending dragons on paper. Or run a flower shop, filled to the brim with flowers and ribbons, and play Jewel all day. Law of Diminishing Returns? Pfft.

These are all very different from say, if I were a sales person in a shop and actually needed the money. Then it all becomes super stressful. If you have to worry about if there are enough customers, or if you will still have your job if the shop runs on losses…

So yes, Dolly aside, who has benefitted from her economy and capitalism and Hollywood, I guess it’s easy for people who don’t really need the money to say that they are all about the job and being passionate. How lovely, no? Us plebs who are poorer than church mice in a backwater economy look at jobs a little differently.

I lowkey want to write about ‘ancestral wealth’ in Mizoram too. I have my firm opinions on how ancestral wealth can be for people who probably only even found out there were people with white skin less than two hundred years back. Less. Than. Two centuries. That's a very short timeframe to talk about non-monetary economy to ancestral wealth. But I think it might be a bit of a touchy subject.

Meanwhile, I dream of windfall gains.