This morning on my bike ride I was listening to ‘Go Ask Ali’ podcast, by Ali Wentworth. She was talking with Arthur Brooks, about the study of happiness. This topic is something I have been working on my whole life. The reason I went to school for Psychology, and what I am working for every day in my own life. The thought that I took with me today from this podcast, is that happiness and unhappiness are not opposites, but separate buckets. Meaning to work to improve happiness by lessening unhappiness doesn’t work, but instead, to work on improving happiness.
Think of them as instead of yin and yang or a teeter-totter, but more a bar graph. Happiness could be equal to unhappiness, happiness could be double unhappiness. or you could have zero unhappiness and also zero happiness. (Insert light bulb here)
This got me thinking about all kinds of things, but mostly the lifelong search for happiness. Not that I was unhappy, but to the point above, I was focusing on gathering happiness to offset the unhappiness, but it doesn’t work like that.
This topic is especially important to me nowadays, as my daughter is battling depression, as many teenagers are during these crazy times. How do I teach her about managing her own happiness, something that at almost 50 years of age I am still learning? But that is it, right? Happiness is an ongoing journey, it is not an item to check off the to-do list. Ah, I reached Happiness, check, and now I will live here the rest of my life. No, it is a trail with hills and valleys, and twists and turns and it is our responsibility to find the happiness in the twists, as much as the downslopes.
And what looked like happiness to me at her age, 15, looks very different than happiness at 50. At 15, I wanted to graduate high school, have friends, have a boyfriend, move out and make my own rules, (ROFL) go to college, get married, and have babies. But I had no idea all the work that came with those items that I thought would bring me happiness.
While I am happy to have achieved all of those things, that is not happiness to me now. Happiness looks much smaller. Seeing my children happy, in the smallest of moments, talking to my husband on the patio over a cup of coffee, yoga at the beach, a morning bike ride.
I’m off to the patio for coffee and happiness. What will make you happy today?