This is the ecotrain question of the week.
I want to say the answer to this is very simple. The only thing I need to be happy is to decide to be happy. There isn’t a thing or a person or a circumstance. Happiness is a choice. Sometimes I choose it, and sometimes I don’t. It’s really that simple.
Certainly there are situations that make it easier. There are a host of things I enjoy doing, and it’s definitely easier to be happy when I am doing something I enjoy, like playing with my kids, traveling, swimming, walking on the beach, hanging out with friends and family, and drinking beer.
Money definitely makes happy easier, but that’s its own post quite frankly. I have been thinking a lot about this lately, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying and probably doesn’t know what it’s like to be poor. Of course money won’t make you happy, but living without it creates a shitload of struggle, and I am totally certain of this.
Love, of course, makes happy easier. In fact, I think it is impossible to be unhappy in the early stages of love. It’s that blissed out, nothing can shake my joy feeling. That’s perfect deliciousness. In fact new friendships or close community can have a very similar effect. It’s wonderful to feel connected to others as it is a kind of closeness to God.
A few years ago, I lost my job and was living off the sale of my house. I decided to move to Belize. Everything fell through, and I then had no house, no money, and no job. I was living in a trailer with one of my least favorite people on all the earth in the most backwards ass corner of South Carolina in absolute redneck hell. Speaking of hell, that’s about how hot it was. I was absolutely happy as a lark. I was in love, and I was also living with a wonderful friend who has a true gift for staying happy. We journaled and did grids and talked about what made us happy and did things that made us happy. In spite of totally horrific circumstances, it was one of the happiest times of my life. I made a decision to be happy at least partly because succumbing to the darkness in such a place would have ended in me being drowned in depression. Then I did the things that I know help me to stay happy. All that said, it definitely took some effort.
I want to be clear, too, that when depression hits, all the rules are off. Depression can come during really good times when circumstances would seem to make it easy to choose happy. Depression has its own path, and it can ruin the best situations. It’s actually one of the signs of depression that things that normally make you happy no longer do. I mention all this because it is so important to never tell anyone dealing with depression to just get over it or choose to be happy. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that, though all of us who deal with it wish it did.
Outside of depression, though, I believe it is ultimately a choice, so if you are sitting around waiting for some certain set of circumstances to come along to make you happy, you may as well quit waiting. Here, too, I have a really good example. I wanted to move to Belize for about 20 years before I actually did so. When I moved down here, I should have been exceptionally happy, right? I wasn’t. I was often filled with anxiety. Now during some of that time I was dealing with an intense depression, but at other times I was just feeling kinda average. A total dream come true to live in this incredibly beautiful place around so many wonderful people, but it wasn’t enough. As much as I know money will make my life easier and make it easier to choose happy, that will not be the thing either. There is no thing. There is only free will and choosing to take life by the horns. Even out of depression it isn’t always easy. The world is kind of a shit show right now, but I truly believe we are much better able to help ourselves and others when we are coming from joy and peace.
What do you think?
Much love, y’all!
As always, all pics are mine or pixabay unless otherwise noted.
