Am I Happy?
By: Mamie P Muse
Tags: Life, Happiness

When someone asks “are you happy?” how do you evaluate your vast life-tapestry into a simple yes or no answer?

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

“Are You Happy?”

It can be a completely benign question, it could be a genuinely concerned query, or it could imply that the person asking the question doesn’t believe the subject of their question IS happy. When the question arises unexpectedly while discussing my current state of (recent) unemployment and my plans for the future, I feel the latter is probably true.

It seems a little disingenuous to ask if I’m happy while juggling financial and career worries and becoming increasingly stressed over them. It took me a while to formulate an answer, which prompted further worried questioning, but I can honestly say that I am happy.

Am I completely content with my life and the way things stand? No. Am I striving for something more for myself, my family and our future? Hell, yes! Do I occasionally wish that things had gone differently or that we had done something better? Of course, I do. Very few people live life without regrets.

The difference between happiness, contentment, and bliss

The question, “are you happy?” is incomplete; it misses the nuance that life requires for us to appreciate it. The fluctuation between the highs and lows, ease and hardship, joy and sorrow. Would you appreciate joy and ecstasy so much if you had never experienced the pits of despair or sadness? Would you feel the relief of economic ease without the pinch of financial difficulty? There is a balance to be found that cannot be encompassed by the simplicity of happiness.

Overall, the balance in my life is positive, the highs outweigh the lows. If I look at happiness as a measure of balance then I can be true to myself and say that I am happy.

Am I blissful? Um, no. I have moments of pure bliss, but I suspect it is unhealthy to spend every moment blissed-out on the universe (and highly improbable without altered brain chemistry).

Am I content? To a certain degree of contentedness, yes I am content. My family life makes me content. I have a wonderful husband — not perfect by any stretch, but my life-partner, friend and lover. My son makes me extraordinarily proud, frustrated, and speechless on a daily basis — sometimes all at the same time.

But does all of that equate to happiness?

There are bumps and wiggles along the path of life. If the question had been asked fourteen months ago, I would have had to think much harder about the question. Depression had me in its grip, I wasn’t working, my self-esteem was at an all-time low, stay at home mum, with little social interaction (that part doesn’t bother me), but with no time or energy to do anything for myself (didn’t write, didn’t read, barely able to watch a favourite TV show etc).

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I can see everything that was going on back then and surmise that I had almost the same things going for me then as I do now, but now I see things from a perspective of not being depressed. I do derive joy from my family life, I’ve found the time to do things for me, I’ve recently rediscovered my womanly wiles (and my relationship with my husband).

Asking if I am happy is almost cruel because it forces me to evaluate the balance in my life. I may have been focussing on enjoying the positives, but asking me to inspect the balance between the positives and negatives impels me to focus on the bad. There will always be problems along the road, but this is not a fairy story (or if it is, it’s one of the Grimm’s before Disneyfication).

Cinderella knew hardship and drudgery, before swapping a prison of servitude to the gilded cage of royalty. Sleeping Beauty had problems with a little prick. Belle went forth and dealt with the anger management issues of her future prince. Don’t get me started on Elsa’s social anxiety and Anna’s desperate need for another person to make her feel whole.

Even in fairy stories, happiness is not guaranteed. Happily ever after is just the end of that tale, there are more tales to be told until everyone is dead and buried.

Happily ever after is a Myth

Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar or delusional.

“Are you happy?”

“No. My husband is crap at cleaning, my son ignores me and is naughty. My self-esteem is in the toilet because I’ve lost my job, and I’m considering moving back to a city where it is stupidly expensive to live but is the only place I can find work.”

When you put it like that it seems so petty, but it is a fact of life that not everything is going to be sunshine and roses.

If my life were a fairy tale, happily ever after would have been our wedding day. Happily ever after makes no reference to the life that continues after that day; it is a lazy story ending and a Big Fat Lie. If happily ever after were to have any basis, in reality, it would last the length of the honeymoon and then they would die in each other’s arms after spectacular sex.

If anyone expects happily ever after then they are setting themselves up for disappointment. A good aim would be more or less happy.

Am I Happy? Are you Happy?

I am happy. I have no job, my writing makes me nothing, my son doesn’t sleep through the night, I’m exhausted, my sex life is insufficient, I’m eating emotionally so the 15kgs I just lost os creeping back on at an alarming speed…(the list goes on)

…but, the feel of my baby boy’s arms around my neck when he wakes in the night for comfort makes me warm and squishy. We may be too exhausted for sex, but every night I fall asleep with my Honey’s arm around me and his breath on my neck. I have the emotional support from my husband to continue pursuing a writing career, rather than taking any old job, just to make finances a little freer. I look at my son and see the absolute best from me and my husband, I’m proud of the little man he’s becoming.

In my mind, the second list gives me more to be happy about, than the first gives me cause to despair.

I can see the problems well enough to do something about them, I just don’t want to dwell on them.

If I can see my shadow, I know that the sun is shining on me.