Define Happiness?
By: Isichei Chijioke
Tags: Happiness, Baby, Parenting, Social Media

Define Happiness?



“wHaT wOuLd YoU sAy WaS tHe HaPpIeSt DaY oF yOuR LiFe?”







This singular question is rampant on social media nowadays but not for its original purpose. Psychologists ask the question to trigger nostalgia to place the subject in a positive psychological realm, as an aid to bring out deep seated and pressing concerns. It is more in use nowadays to trigger responses for no sincere purpose, mostly for web traffic; things we call click-baits nowadays. So filtering through responses sometimes would make one wonder if people really mean what they type to themselves, because, face it, being on your phone, or device, and staying on social media is like having an inaudible monologue with your phone and your followers as the combustible, ever present, but silent audience who offer no ambience but just stare at you and have the ability to cheer you on or jeer you out.



The idea of happiness is almost transient as people describe moments of grand designs and at some point try to “outhappy” the previous comment from an unknown individual.



This is not about doubting their experiences or trying to demean another individual’s meaning of happiness, it just simply puts one at the centre of that audience and I watch as everyone wants to get on the stage without anyone reading the script and the director; the person that initially asked the question, staring gleefully at the ensuring chaos and calling it entropy.



Amidst the chaos I ask myself this same question and I fall short of an answer, I had unconsciously attached other emotions to those memories people had laced with endorphins and dopamine, don’t get me wrong, I had some happy moments, but trying to connect my own experiences to similar ones I was reading and visualizing came up short. None of them come close to being the happiest.



I have a problem, I know, but please understand my point.



I got into university knowing I would graduate one day, my final day wasn’t going to rub my eyes blind to the mental torture I had academically & emotionally from my first day in the school till that day, I never could single out my induction into the medical and dental council as a happy day. Till date, the medical and dental council have treated me like a cashcow, our relationship is similar to that of an absent stepfather who shows up to his sons door once a year to collect money for liquor, I know you can’t relate but imagine a landlord coming to collect his rent once a year but you have been staying all year in his dilapidated house with cracked walls, broken windows & a leaking roof.



At first glance I would sound like a sad person, like a man that has no joy, but it’s far from it. The difference between me and you is that I consciously avoid being plagued to keep a memory of extremely happy moments because that in itself is a show of doubt that they will be scarce, that they will never be repeated, that they are one-off moments that need you revisiting the past to get some succor and a window away from the present.



The mindset I have is totally in the present, if a happy moment occurs, I totally enjoy it, I stay there and that’s it. The memory stays but its fleeting, not because a sad one comes to replace it, but I genuinely know that a happier one is around the corner.



I had a son recently, there was anxiety…



… I remember not having a clue to what I should do, or how I should act days to his birth, nothing prepared me for that moment. There was joy, overwhelming feeling when I had him in my arm, but I was still crazy anxious that my wife was still in the delivery room, I handed my son to his grandma, my son, by the way, kept looking at me like how I look at the medical and dental council reminder for license renewal but there was joy…



…the idea that biology came full circle and I was holding an offspring was a moment laced with enough joy to last me through the coming days, at a point there was a flash forward and I could already see the little chap telling me to help him with his homework…I digress, then there was relief…



…The journey with my wife is filled with moments of me wondering if she was okay, to me calling myself out as to how I could just be the way I was with no bodily change, but her body changing daily before my very eyes. She would jokingly quip if I didn’t mind carrying the big bump for a day so she could rest, just a joke, but to me I wished there was a possibility. There was anxiety, joy, and relief…then there was happiness…



..It came when I saw my wife carrying my son, smiling at him, she said hi… that moment…only that moment… and it passed, then there was silence… that was me putting everything into view and a baby’s cry broke the silence… then there was reality.



To immediately go to my memory when asked for “happy” would be false on my part, memories fade, so I put the unhappy ones there, let time come as waves and wash up that sand, but you see happiness, its present, it does not last long, but no matter how little time it spends with you, it lingers, and it is worth it.



One day we will have to stop the monologue with our phones and shut the audience and really get to have conversations with ourselves, that’s when we would define happiness. Not some fleeting rendition of a hopeless performance of other similar emotions directed by memory… Happiness stays as that short-lived feeling that stains the fabric of your mind permanently and forever.