You Don’t Always Need to be Happy
I got the idea for today’s post from one of my daughters who is a senior in high school. The title of the post is part of her belief statement for her Theory of Knowledge class: “You don’t always need to be happy. Life is hard sometimes and we have to accept that.” I thought this was a very wise statement. People often have this misconception that if we aren’t “happy”, then we aren’t doing things right. But realistically happiness is a special feeling for special occasions. It can not always be attained. And that is ok. Life is hard. Road blocks get in the way. Bad things happen sometimes that make it hard to feel happy. A more realistic measure of how we are doing is the ability to attain contentment.
When we are content we can face life’s challenges a little more easily. It’s not going to make the big crises any easier, but it certainly makes the smaller stuff easier to bare. For example, we all have to wear masks when we go out in public. If we start our day at the base level of “irritable”, then having to put on a mask to go out in public might seem like another annoyance. And if you happen to wear glasses you have the added stress of your glasses fogging up (which, by the way, seems to be a bigger issue now that our mornings are getting chillier). So start out irritable, get annoyed by the mask, and then have your glasses fog up as you walk into work, you might have moved up a notch or two to down right angry. But, if you started your day feeling content, then adding a mask might not be so bothersome. In fact, you might be a little looking forward to a new one you recently picked up because it was cute. And if your glasses fog up, it might be a nuisance, but it’s tolerable. When you walk into work with mask on and glasses fogged you might chuckle a little at how silly you look, but then you go about your day. So contentment, that’s a reasonable goal.
Happy is of course good to shoot for here and there, but it shouldn’t be our gold standard. Happy is what we look for on vacation. Happy is what we look for when we get together with friends for a game night and anticipate some laughter and silliness. Happy is what we feel when our children are born healthy. Happy is what we feel on birthdays and holidays. Expecting to feel happy every day might result in a lot of disappointment.
Content is what we feel when we have a healthy family. Content is what we feel when we take pride in the work we do each day. Content is what we feel when we grow old with the person we love. Content is what we feel when our kids go out into the world and make it on their own.
Yes, there are definitely hard times when we don’t feel happy or content. We all have our own burdens to bare. Whether we lost our parents way too soon, grew up in poverty, our parents got divorced, our children got sick, or any number of traumatic things that may have happened, we’ve all experienced pain and suffering. Maybe the pain took the wind right out of us. Happiness might seem like a distant memory. Happiness might not return right away. Whatever you have been through, are still going through, or might go through in the future, returning to happiness might feel impossible and cause us to give up hope. But in the midst of our suffering, when there is calm, and we start to connect with our true selves again, we start to see that contentment might be out there. It might be slightly out of our reach, but it certainly is something we can strive to attain. It might be a long journey to get there, but in each quiet moment, in each drying tear, we get closer to it.
So take stock in the happy memories you hold. Take notice of the good things you have in your life that bring that feeling of calm and contentment. Ride the waves of grief and suffering when they come, knowing that one day those feelings will fade and contentment will come back into view. And some day, when you least expect it, happiness will shine through again.