I’ve been thinking an awful lot lately about what it means to be happy. I don’t mean like today is a good day kind of happy either. I mean digging deep into your soul and finding a sort of quiet. Peace.
This should be entirely shocking (read with dripping sarcasm) but I recently read a book and quite liked one section. I really don’t want to give anything away just in case you care to read the book. Thus, I will simply tell you that a character in the book, a woman, is responding to a marriage survey via email. You don’t know the questions she is being asked and you can only view her responses. I imagined that she was asked what she [most] wants when she responded as follows: “To want the people you love to be happy. To look homeless people in the eye. To not want what you don’t have. What you can’t have. What you shouldn’t have. To not text while driving. To control your appetite. To want to be where you are” (Melanie Gideon. Wife 22: A Novel. Ballantine Books, 2012. Print). This answer resonated with me because if I imagined that very question asked of me, I believe my answer would be similar in nature though I suppose I would add on to the end ‘to not entertain unfounded and irrational fears.’
Interestingly, I believe that most of those sentiments roll up to ‘wanting to be where you are’ as that particular thought so far as I am concerned is true and pure happiness.
When I went through my yoga teaching certification training I was taught about various facets of the lineage of Ashtanga yoga or Indian philosophy. One concept I learned about is called santosha which in Sanskrit means contentment or satisfaction. There is a depth and intensity to the idea of santosha but if you break it down to its bitty understandable parts it means to want to be where you are or contentment with what is. I suppose it might be obvious to you, my reader, but I want to clarify something because I had to truly learn it and in many ways it is still a process for me. Santosha is not future or past based. It is not the feeling that one can achieve a wonderful state or once felt a sort of overall peace. It is a breath in the very present. It is real acceptance. For me, it is the erasure of longing, anxiety, and unease.
This should also not blow you away with shock but I am a classic over-thinker. I ponder and wonder beyond what would be a point of comfort for most folks. I try not to entertain feelings of regret but I will often go over in my head an exchange or action and wonder what could have been or might have been. I believe my thinking comes hand in hand with my sensitivity, empathy, compassion, and sometimes self-critical nature. I treasure my ability to self-reflect and respect such in others but I do recognize that this quality or action can occasionally be a sneaky thief of joy. The act of overthinking can transition very quickly from an inner journey to a boat load of “what ifs.” I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you that ‘what if’ is not part of any formula that I am aware of that leads to contentment. The same holds true for wanting what you don’t have, can’t have, and shouldn’t have, as those are a different form of ‘what if’ in their equally potent ability to steal joy.
If we want to get cheeky for a moment, I will remind you that texting while driving (or concerting or watching a movie, etc.) carries the same risk. Outside of the danger and the potential alienation with respect to the people you may be attending any particular activity with, texting while _____ takes you out of the moment you are in and places you in another past or future moment. Just a PSA. Don’t text and do other stuff, especially driving.
I want to tie this thought into relationships because there is a profound connection that exists there and I believe it is not only relevant but extraordinarily important. It is my firm belief that when we live in a place of wanting what we don’t, can’t, and/or shouldn’t have in a relationship, unhappiness is an almost certain result. This means coveting another’s relationship, craving a relationship with someone unavailable, choosing the wrong person, or wanting something more with a person before or outside of its natural time or course. I want to break this down so that it makes perfect sense to you, as it does me (fingers crossed).
When we covet another’s relationship, we are often failing to recognize a very important point and we are concurrently engaging in self-sabotage. Our hankering for what someone else has is often based on our perception of that thing and can be the furthest thing from reality. Even if our insight aligns closely with reality, there is no real way to determine whether that thing, or that interaction, would work for us. Huh? Yeah, I know. Let me give a sort of out there but very good example. I’ve smelled perfume on someone and thought it totally delicious. I’ve run out and purchased myself a bottle immediately only to discover that the fragrance smells nothing like the deliciousness I’ve experienced on ME. My body chemistry does not mix the same way with the perfume as it does with that individual I smelled it on and I find myself disappointed and even jealous. A relationship might smell good on someone else, but one’s personal experience can be quite different. To that end, we can destroy a perfectly good relationship when holding it up against a relationship that is pure fiction.
We’ve talked about the unavailable partner before so I’ll keep this paragraph short but I will explain just a bit for those of you that missed the earlier nods to this particular brand of self-destruction. When we choose someone unavailable in the hopes of (i) changing his/her mind or (ii) creating a situation of a pre-determined implosion, we are likely locking in the possibility of disappointment or sadness. Even if we ultimately fear a commitment and thus opt for numero dos (been there, do that often), it is still a soul-crushing experience.
When we choose the wrong person we often find ourselves on a roller coaster filled with high highs and low lows. I have found myself clinging to the happy moments to justify my continued attachment to or engagement with a particular person when it is obvious to even me that the bad times far outweigh the good. The highs and the hope I have connected to the situation are the elements that draw me back to ‘bad’ over and over again. There is nothing positive that comes out of linking to the unobtainable or unachievable. It is the very definition of an exercise in futility. Anyway…moving on…
I want to be clear before I jump into the next category that I am not trying to shit all over your manifesting. In fact, I believe that putting good vibes out into the universe is pretty essential. As I’ve said before, we need to identify what we want in clear and certain terms and then we need to put that out into the universe to even be open to it. That said I do not believe you can manifest your way into something that may not be meant to be. More than that, I don’t believe you can or should force something to morph into something else before its ready, if it will ever be ready at all. This also links with the whole picking someone unavailable bit but can be even more dangerous in some fashion. When someone is blatantly unavailable, we might still hope and wish or deliberately want something with them. That said their unavailability is evident to us, albeit sometimes buried in our subconscious. What I am talking about here is someone we have a significant relationship with whereas our focus is on what more we want or what could be rather than what will be or what is. Interactions of this nature are plagued with ultimatums, look-forward conversations, and expectations of future feelings. As you might imagine, these communications are often fraught with stress, pressure, empty promises, and even deception. You know, the whole ‘I’ll tell you what you want to hear so we can move onto another topic, even if what I am saying is not my actual truth’ bit.
You should be sensing a theme by now. Maybe that’s not fair. I never would have picked up on a theme had I not been leveled by some pretty shitty relationships. If you picked up on it, great. If you didn’t, here is the over-arching sentiment: when we live outside of the present, we often find ourselves in a state of unhappiness. That doesn’t mean that you cannot be happy pondering the future or unhappy in the present. It means that we welcome a special kind of discontent when we live in the ‘what was’ or ‘what will be.’
I can’t always easily identify happiness or at least I was never really very good at doing so. I suppose I always thought happiness was a mostly fleeting and temporary state. I thought the opposite of misery is happy and didn’t realize how disconnected those states can be. I thought we had no part in causing our own happiness but rather, the world created such for us or it didn’t. I claimed myself unworthy and unlucky. Now I recognize that the universe might have a plan for us, but our decisions and actions play a significant role in our happiness or lack thereof. We often have the power of choice. We choose who we share our life with and how we interact with them. We cannot choose how long someone stays, how they feel about us, or how they act. We can choose how long we open our heart to them, how we feel about them, and how we react to their actions.
I am not suggesting that happiness is always or even ever easy. For much of my life true contentment has been elusive. I am suggesting that if I made a wish list today, I would not put success or a relationship at the top. My number one want? Happiness. Joy with what is. Contentment in the moment. Santosha.
It doesn’t have to be yours but maybe recognize YOUR happiness as something YOU own and bump it up from #57. Just a thought.
Until the next,
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 