The Price of Happiness: An Ongoing Tale

I began this blog like 3 or 4 years ago in an attempt to write the trials and tribulations of what it’s like to be me in the dating world.  Initially, I started writing it as a way for me to look back on the mistakes I made along the way, or even to laugh at my own personal anecdotes.  And as I posted more and more of my personal style of writing, more and more people started to subscribe and really read what I wrote.  Some even took a few grains of wisdom from my convoluted ramblings, and that made me happy.  Now, in the present, this blog has taken a couple of turns and has become a “slice of life” kind of blog, instead of my humorous attempts at finding love.  Part of the reason for that is that I just gave up on “dating.”  I was never really good at going out, meeting someone, and then somehow creating some excuse to ask them out on a date, and quite truthfully, my forays into online dating became more of an elaborate sociological comedy routine than fun.  The other part was that I found myself dwelling too much on something that was just not a good aspect of my life.  And as I went back and read the things that happened to me over the years, I just realized that the name of the blog is aptly named…I’m just not very good at finding someone.

And…that’s okay.  Because I discovered that my happiness really wasn’t that contingent whether or not I got a date.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that this search for the big love of my life was actually the source of most of my anxiety.  I’m the kind of guy that feels like a failure when they don’t get it right on the first try.  So with something like dating, which is almost entirely impossible to get right without making a few hundred mistakes, it isn’t exactly the best kind of thing to base my happiness on.  I found that I got depressed easily when things didn’t go “right”, which is just about the most arbitrary term out there.  I didn’t like that so much of my life was spent hanging on something that I had no control over.  So I decided to just stop, take a step back, and take stock of the things in my life.  Instead, I started to focus on the people that I DID have in my life, and how they fit into it.  Slowly but surely, I stopped feeling so alone, especially when I realized that I was never alone to begin with.  And that brings me back to the point of this entry: What does it mean to be happy?  …which I suppose is just about as general and “slice of life” as you can really get for an entry.  It’s kind of like trying to figure out the Colonel’s secret recipe and starting with salt.

Belle and I have this conversation quite often, and it got me to thinking about the nature of happiness and how best to achieve it.  The first thing I came up with is that people tend to confuse “satisfaction” and “happiness.”  Believe it or not, it’s an important distinction to make.  Satisfaction is an aspect, but not the thing itself.  That’s why the majority of people who feel happy tend to also feel satisfied, but satisfied people aren’t necessarily always happy.  Put into context: I got my BA in English back in 2005 (cue Avenue Q).  After graduation, I immediately went to massage school and got my certification in massage therapy.  I would create individual sessions for people, lessen their muscle aches, help them relax, and make some of their pain go away.  I was physically exhausted at the end of the day, and honestly, it didn’t feel like my brain was doing much thinking…but I enjoyed it.  It was nice being able to help people feel better, and so I felt very satisfied in how I was doing my job.  But combined with my own fatigue at the end of the day, and the fact that the money really wasn’t all that good…I didn’t feel all that happy.  I was doing so much for other people, but I really didn’t do anything for myself.

So…after doing that for 2 years, I quit and became Al Bundy (a womens’ shoes salesman) where I worked for a good 2 years before being promoted to their Logistic Manager.  Again, these jobs didn’t pay all that well, and felt like the pay scale was not equivalent to the work that I seemed to be doing.  Both of these jobs made me neither satisfied or happy, however I was with my ex fiancée at the time, and I was even able to perform in a musical or two, so my personal life was now on an uphill swing.  But then my company went through restructuring and they eliminated my position.  So I took my severance package and I was dismissed since the closest reassignment was 30 miles away.  On top of that, my fiancée broke it off with me less than a month later, and I was forced to move back in with my mother.  At this point I was neither satisfied or happy…actually, I was downright miserable.

Okay…so in the above examples you’ll notice that I felt the most satisfied when I had a definitive occupation, and had a fulfilling goal.  To add onto my previous definition, satisfaction occurs (at least for me) when something goes according to a positive expectation. But on average, satisfaction tends to be in something that you don’t necessarily choose for yourself.  It wasn’t by choice, but rather it was the anticipation matching my expectation.  Put simply…it’s a small sliver of happiness.  A bite size morsel.  Will these little bits of satisfaction add up to help you be happy?  Absolutely.  Will it fill you up?  Not necessarily.  On the opposite side there’s my personal life where everything that occurs is a product of my choices.  When my personal life goes well, it means it was due to the correct course of actions that I chose to take.  These were my big bites, my banquets.  No matter what else was going on in my life, these were the things that filled me up.  So with this I realized that whether good or bad, one aspect of being happy is making a choice and seeing the result of that choice to the end.  The outcome may be positive, which will most definitely swing your meter to the Happy side quickly.  If the outcome is negative or satisfactory…well then how you perceive it will determine whether you feel badly or satisfied, but probably not happy.

I know that that makes me sound like a control freak, but honestly when it comes to being happy, the only thing you can really control is the making of the choice.  Everything else is just a series of unpredictable variables and a slew of unforeseeable outcomes.  I’m not even saying that you can CHOOSE to be happy.  What you have to do is to make a decision to make a choice that could potentially lead to happiness.  It’s all a crap shoot in the end.  And that leads me to my second point.

Take little victories.  The big happy moments in our lives are always like winning the lottery.  It takes a lot of luck, a lot of patience, and just the right conditions.  You might not even know if you are truly happy until 5 years down the road, and by that time it’s already too late to turn around and go back.  It is worth the risk…but how do you hold out until you get there?  Small joys, little bits of happiness.  While satisfying moments will keep you going, it’s the little victories that will tide you over for longer.  To go back to my food analogy…it’s like going to your local convenience store and getting a chicken caesar wrap.  It will tide you over, it tastes pretty good, and it’s convenient.  You might eat one a few times a week without getting too sick of it.  But that’s really all it will do for you.  It occupies space but it’s not very emotionally fulfilling.  Whereas happiness…well the little joys are all about the occasional bites that you only need a little of, and it will keep you happy for a long time.  My favorite example is when I went to Chef Anita Lo’s Annisa in New York City.  On her menu is a soup dumpling on a small bed of fresh slice jicama with a piece of seared foie gras on the top of the dumpling.  You get one on a wide porcelain spoon, and you eat it in one bite.  Let me tell you…every time I have that dish, I have to stop and take a minute.  The feeling when you get a perfect bite is euphoric, heady, and if you’re lucky…it’s lingering.  Sure I could have an entire plate of those things, but that would defeat its purpose.  They make you happy because you get a little bit, and it is gratifying as the taste remains on your tongue.

And that’s what those little bits of happiness are…  It’s a small morsel that carries into every part of you.  It’s the kiss, and then the light taste of wax from their lipstick.  It’s the feeling of cold water on a hot day.  These aren’t just satisfying moments…they can be happy ones, if we’d allow them to be.  It’s all in how we measure out our joys.  If we keep waiting for the big pay off that may never come, we’ll never be full.  We all have to live in the moment, after all.  Stacks upon stacks of satisfying moments may not lead to happiness, but dole out enough of those little goodies that make our heart smile…you’ll be well on your way to being well and truly happy.  …or if not, you’ll be able to last until you are.