Tuesday, 06 January 2009

• Am I Happy? Happiness Is...

   by Mama Dragonfly

  So someone asked me yesterday if I was happy.
  
  It should have been an easy question but I found myself evading it, because I did not know. Well, am I happy? I wondered all day. I have moments of happiness, that's for sure. But I'm not feeling like I'm joyous most of the time. Don't get me wrong. I think I have a pretty good life. Nice family, good childhood, job that pays a decent wage and offers flexibility and great benefits, even if it brings down my spirit with ego-wars and office politics from time to time. There are times I want to shoot myself in the head when it gets to be too bad, but the employer pays for the dependents college tuition, so like everything else in my life, I stick with it, always thinking about my children's futures.  This is life, so suck it up, like my mom would say.
  
  Overall,  I should be happy. I should kiss the earth and feel grateful for such a blessed life. I am more than grateful, but I just can't shake the feeling that something more is out there. And I am letting it go past me without even a glance.

  My best friend said that I should embrace this life of mine, and that there is nothing out there. She should know. At the age of thirty three, she lost her husband,whom she's been with since high school, when he died in an accident. She knows how not to waste a moment of her life daydreaming about other possibilities. Even when suddenly left alone with two small babies, living a woman's worst nightmare, I've only seen her cry twice; the rest she keeps it all inside, for the sake of her boys, she says. Three weeks after the funeral, she and I went to see Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up act.  Being huge fans of him, we had been planning to see Jerry for months, in fact, the minute we heard he was coming to town to do a show. But I thought after she lost her husband, she might not want to go anymore. Instead, she insisted that we needed to go, more so than ever, because she wanted to remember what it's like to laugh.  So we went, and watched Jerry pulled one joke after another. I tried not to think of the empty seat next to her, once intended for Joe, her lost husband.
  
  "What's with all the makeup on the dead people?" Jerry started at one point during the night, and  lingered on the funeral jokes for about ten minutes.
  
  I sat frozen, in silence, unable to breathe or take the image of Joe out of my head, him lying in the casket, his smashed skull carefully arranged and covered, makeup on his sweet ashen face. I cried silently for him, and I cried for his widow, who was sitting next to me, so pale but determined,  all the while the crowd roared with laughter at Jerry's jokes. With her eyes glistened with tears, but a stiff smile on her face, she turned to me and said, "It's Okay, A., It's okay to laugh." My heart broke right then.
  
  She is something else, isn't she? A remarkable woman of grace and unimaginable fortitude - the stuff that separates the heroes from the feeble-minded. Surrounded by people like her, I feel extraordinarily weak.  I was not born with a great spirit;  my insides are filled with  ten thousand silly fixations, crippling insecurities, and unrealistic expectations.  Most of the time, I walk around with my head in the cloud wondering about the what ifs, and what's out there for me. Am I so spoiled that I don't know a good thing when I see it? At which point in your life you accept this is it and resign to the facts? Or do you search for something until you know you've found it? How do you recognize it when you find it?
  
  Maybe there is no happily ever after. Or the truth is not out there, like the X-files suggest. (had to throw it in there, used to be a huge X-files fan). I hope for my sake,  my truth is right inside me amid my other superfluous junk; now if only I can find a way to retrieve it.
  
  Maybe I'm going about it all wrong. Happiness comes in small doses, and I should not question it, or worry about the longevity, but find a way  to savor it, moment by moment.
  
  What makes you happy or when are you happiest?

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