I've been paying attention the past few weeks about how people refer to happiness. "I'm so happy". "I thought I'd be happy when..." "I have everything I want, but I'm not happy". "She makes me happy". For me, happiness is a fleeting emotion, one that comes and goes. As are all emotions - feelings that happen and then move on, replaced by the next one and the next one and the next one. Happiness to me is not a state of being. Peace, on the other hand, is a state of being. I believe it is peace people truly desire and they (and I) confuse this with being happy.
Three things about being happy:
- I have spent years looking for happiness, wondering where it was, why it was so hard to find. When would I be happy? Why wasn't I just HAPPY? I was the queen of the self-help books. I had dozens on my shelf. I'd read them, agree or disagree with the principles therein. I may have done some of the exercises and a little bit of work. I still wasn't happy. What was wrong with me? I should be happy; the books said so. There was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I had just learned to believe that happiness was magical, that somehow the right person, place, thing would come into my life and with it would be...happiness. Once I decided that it wasn't happiness that was missing from my life but peace and soul-feeding, my life began to seem better, feel better. I need to remember to always go back to the place of peace, no matter what is going on in my life, in my brain, in my heart.
- Some people and things do make me happy. Externals that influence how I'm feeling can bring some moments of happiness. But I've learned, for me, that nothing and no one BRINGS happiness. When I choose to react to a person or situation or a physical object with acceptance and joy, I label that feeling as being happy. I have the choice. Often times it is hard to remember. Sometimes I want to choose unhappiness. I want to wallow. I just want to feel miserable. I need to have those times too. We all do. When I deny the happy, I also deny the sad, the mad, the love, the enjoyment. It is far too easy to turn emotions off. That is dangerous. I'm getting better at knowing this and better at catching it sooner.
- Replaying old life scenes in my head with a focus on "happy" brings a different perspective to the life I've lived. I don't pretend awful things didn't happen, I don't pretend it was all okay. I look back with curiosity and try to re-learn a lesson from a different viewpoint. It's a tough exercise and often I relive pain and anger. I can almost always find at least one nugget of good, of happy.
I want to always return to that place of peace within me. I want to bring others along. I want to tell those who are chasing happy to chase peace instead. It's not easy. It seems to leave and abandon, but it does come back. Nourish it. Enjoy it, Accept it. Find your peace and you'll find your happiness.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
I want THAT!
I have been feeling somewhat unsettled and restless lately. Restless inside. Wanting...what? Needing...what? I don't even know for sure. Part of this has to do with loneliness and not seeing my people enough lately. Part of it has to do with my general dissatisfaction with having to spend time working. There's more under all this frustration and crankiness than that. I'm sure a good part of it has to do with a lapse, a slowdown, an almost neglect of my spirituality. I just know I want and need..something. This is a familiar feeling and theme in my life. I struggle with knowing the difference between want and need sometimes. I struggle with asking for help. I struggle with guilt when I do want something. I'm not sure how that came to be; I know it's been there for a long time.
Three things about WANT:
- I grew up as the youngest child of eight in a household and home where there certainly was never enough money. I was sometimes envious of the other kids homes, clothes, toys, and houses that had fathers. I learned somehow that it wasn't right to ask for too much, verbally or through thoughts or prayers. It too often didn't happen. I quickly learned it was too hard to see my Mom's face time after time when she had to say no. There was also unspoken messages about being grateful for what we did have. I don't think these messages came from her as much as from the church, the school, the other well-meaning adults around me. I was taught to be proud of my intelligence and my humour, to look around me and find others who weren't as lucky as I was. There was a resignation that this was just the way things were, that it could be worse, that I had what I needed. In many ways, this has served me well over the years.
- I spent many years thinking want and need were the same thing, and many years thinking the wanting of physical items like cars and houses and clothes would fill the empty hole inside me. Each time I got a bit "luckier" in my life and got the car or the house or the clothes, magic happiness did not rain down upon me. I spent many years thinking the right person, the unconditional love and acceptance, the adoring friends, the good job with an outstanding boss would fill the empty hole. Alas, magic happiness STILL didn't rain down upon me. The hole was still there. And it still wasn't okay within my brain to want something. The guilt at wanting and the non-filled hole with the getting were still there.
- As a single Mom myself with not enough money, I once found myself with an eviction notice. The rent money had gone to buy food and to pay overdue bills. I was scared. I told only a few people about my predicament, and one of them shared my situation with my brother. He called me and we skirted around the issue - he knew and I knew he knew. Finally he said "If you want help, you have to ask for it". That was a key for me and the first time it sunk in to my bull-headedness that it is okay to ask for what you need. Along comes cancer about twenty years later. Of the many things my cancer experience taught me and showed me, one of the most pivotal was it is okay to ask for what I needed and for what I wanted. As I got healthy again, I soon let the guilt about asking come back. Guilt was the great Ruler of want and need.
This week I have thought about this a lot. I believe want and need can often be the same thing. This week realizations and memories about my own needing and my own wanting spilled from my core being into my brain, into my heart, into my soul.The magic does not reign down upon me, ever. The magic comes when I allow myself to need and to want. All I have to do is ask, and wait, and accept what is given.
Three things about WANT:
- I grew up as the youngest child of eight in a household and home where there certainly was never enough money. I was sometimes envious of the other kids homes, clothes, toys, and houses that had fathers. I learned somehow that it wasn't right to ask for too much, verbally or through thoughts or prayers. It too often didn't happen. I quickly learned it was too hard to see my Mom's face time after time when she had to say no. There was also unspoken messages about being grateful for what we did have. I don't think these messages came from her as much as from the church, the school, the other well-meaning adults around me. I was taught to be proud of my intelligence and my humour, to look around me and find others who weren't as lucky as I was. There was a resignation that this was just the way things were, that it could be worse, that I had what I needed. In many ways, this has served me well over the years.
- I spent many years thinking want and need were the same thing, and many years thinking the wanting of physical items like cars and houses and clothes would fill the empty hole inside me. Each time I got a bit "luckier" in my life and got the car or the house or the clothes, magic happiness did not rain down upon me. I spent many years thinking the right person, the unconditional love and acceptance, the adoring friends, the good job with an outstanding boss would fill the empty hole. Alas, magic happiness STILL didn't rain down upon me. The hole was still there. And it still wasn't okay within my brain to want something. The guilt at wanting and the non-filled hole with the getting were still there.
- As a single Mom myself with not enough money, I once found myself with an eviction notice. The rent money had gone to buy food and to pay overdue bills. I was scared. I told only a few people about my predicament, and one of them shared my situation with my brother. He called me and we skirted around the issue - he knew and I knew he knew. Finally he said "If you want help, you have to ask for it". That was a key for me and the first time it sunk in to my bull-headedness that it is okay to ask for what you need. Along comes cancer about twenty years later. Of the many things my cancer experience taught me and showed me, one of the most pivotal was it is okay to ask for what I needed and for what I wanted. As I got healthy again, I soon let the guilt about asking come back. Guilt was the great Ruler of want and need.
This week I have thought about this a lot. I believe want and need can often be the same thing. This week realizations and memories about my own needing and my own wanting spilled from my core being into my brain, into my heart, into my soul.The magic does not reign down upon me, ever. The magic comes when I allow myself to need and to want. All I have to do is ask, and wait, and accept what is given.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)