Yesterday was an interesting day. It started with me "breaking up" with and unintentionally hurting the feelings of someone I really hadn't thought cared at all, and ended with me walking away from someone else I'm fairly certain won't even know I'm gone. It was all a surprisingly timely commentary on my post on Closure - if the one person hadn't pushed the issue we would have just faded apart, and maybe faded back in at some point (and who knows, maybe we still will - but at least her feelings wouldn't have been so hurt); and with the other I get to really exercise my theory on the possibility of being OK without real "closure".
It was intriguing to see, too, how both these people operated under my new idea of happiness. In the conversation I was having with my boss we were talking about how people will go to strange lengths and do very odd things under the guise of "finding happiness"; and then when "it" fades or they don't find what they're looking for, they'll keep going in even further and more disturbing directions. My comment to my boss was "Happiness is not where you find it - happiness is where you left it." That's not necessarily always the case, of course, but the idea is worth thinking about. We usually learn fairly early in life how to be happy - what to do, how to behave, the kinds of things that bring us joy. Then we grow up, and get confused, and try new things... and start branching away from those early lessons, rather than sticking to them. Both of the people I interacted with yesterday (and the one my boss and I were talking about) knew how to be happy - and they both made choices that perhaps felt good and looked exciting, but led them to the opposite of happiness.
I guess we need to do that every so often, so that we know what the opposite of happiness feels like - still, it was a powerful insight to me that, instead of trying to go somewhere else to find happiness, I need to remember how to be happy and then take it along with me. I think "finding happiness" is really just about remembering who we really are and how it really works.
All in all, it was a very interesting day.
1 comment:
I agree that you are responsible for your own happiness and sometimes we do things that we think will make us happy but in the end do not make us happy. I also think that things happen that are beyond our control that put a serious damper on our happiness. For me, the lesson has been to keep moving forward and focus on the positive things I have in my life.
Probably more than you wanted to know.
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