My mother has a
saying that I rather admire: it’s only when you stop asking yourself whether or
not you’re happy, that you realise you’re actually happy.
In the world we
live in, there seems to be a lot of pressure to be happy, and to think very
hard and very often about whether or not you are. Whether that comes from the
proliferation of self-help books, reality television programmes where people
search for THE BEST partner or THE BEST job, glossy magazines, or just
good-natured but irritating friends – the question “yes, but are you happy
though?”, and the sad frown and tilt of the head that go with it, are ever
present.
My question is
this: if you’re constantly worrying about whether or not you’ve reached the
mecca of happiness, can you really ever get there? I think my Mum has a point.
By the very nature of the thing, happiness can’t go hand in hand with nervous
worrying. And yet the reality is that it’s much harder than you’d think to stop
anxiously checking in with yourself. Am I happy? Am I doing everything I should
be doing? Am I surrounding myself with the right people? Am I in the right job
for me? If I get all of those elements right, will I be able to relax and
believe I’m happy?
Getting those
questions out of your head can be nigh on impossible. Or that’s my experience
of it, anyway. Maybe other people are able to stroll through life, blissfully
unquestioning - blissfully comfortable in who they are and how they feel about
their lot. But I find it hard to imagine what that’s like.
Of course, feeling
more comfortable with who you are, and caring less about what other people
think of you, must go some way to helping with this (I’ve touched on that
before, which those of you who weren’t put off by the word “Hanson” will know).
And yet it can’t be everything. Because learning to ignore the gripes and
demands of other people’s agendas doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve learnt to
ignore the gripes and demands of your own.
We tend to hold
ourselves to a very high standard. Perhaps it comes from the dawning
realisation that you only live once (can’t believe I just used “YOLO”…oh dear),
and a slight desperation to make some kind of positive impact on the world. Now
that can be as grand or as small as you please, but it does mean that there’s
this permanent niggling at the edges of one’s subconscious – the feeling that
you should be making the most of every moment you have.
I’m sure that’s
true to a certain extent: that we should try not to waste the time we have on
anything that we feel isn’t what we want, or doesn’t feel right. However,
there’s a balancing act that has to be done to avoid tipping over into a
persistent state of paranoia, surely? Because who says you have to constantly
be doing grand and amazing things in order to be making the most of life – in
order to be happy?
I don’t think I
have an answer to this yet, unfortunately. Whilst I’m conscious that I
shouldn’t be constantly worrying about whether or not I’m making the most of my
time, and as a result whether or not that means I’m “happy”, I find it hard to
train myself out of that mindset. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to find the key
– I’ll relax, stop asking whether I’m happy, and actually be happy. Don’t worry: if I figure out the trick to doing that,
I’ll share the secret with you guys too. Sharing is caring, after all.
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