Happiness is the answer, but what is the question?
In my 36 years of life, I’ve come to accept my biggest fear in life is being unhappy. When I was fresh out of college, happiness wasn’t necessarily something I was searching for. To be honest, I never knew I needed to be looking for it… as if it were Waldo in the flesh, bobbing and weaving through life with a striped beanie and those ridiculous circle glasses. Happiness was something I understood would automatically happen once I got all my ducks in a row and my shit together. It was another box to check off the list. Graduate college, check. Find the dream job, check. Plan a wedding and get married, check. Start a family, check. Next in line: happiness, check.
Someone forgot to mention a hefty anti-depressant dosage would also need to appear on said check list. It goes without saying that happiness is certainly not what I had previously imagined. I’m only in my thirties but life has schooled the fuck outta me. I’m embarrassed to utter the next words (in fears of the cliche gods coming for me) but truly, happiness is not a final destination, most definitely not a freak accident Final Destination. Happiness is about the journey we are all navigating. The journey called life.
My quest to find and obtain happiness has led me down some dark and twisted paths (fertility struggles, divorce, loneliness, loss, questioning my worth and value). Looking back retrospectively, I see many missed opportunities. Why did I pass those opportunities by, you may ask? Probably because I’m lazy and finding happiness along the journey takes work man. I’ve spent so much time telling myself I’ll be happy when this happens or when that happens. Fuck that. I need to a better job at finding happiness in every single day (the journey), and odds are you do too.
So with that in mind, I’d like to pay homage to all the small things that bring me happiness while on this journey called life. In no particular order…
My Nespresso machine. Fuck, I look forward to having that first cup of coffee in the morning. I don’t even do the espresso or double espresso pods, just the coffee ones and sweet Jesus, I love it.
Slow mornings.
My cat, Birdie. She follows me around and I know she loves me and God, that makes me happy.
Books. Literary fiction, mainly. The ones that are character driven about social issues or some complex existential crisis… if I could crawl inside those books and live, I would.
Sauvignon Blanch… ’nuff said.