But as I enter my doddering missionary years, I find that I am, in fact, generally happier than I have ever been. Sure, I still wake in the middle of the night filled with free-floating anxiety and dread, still find myself racked with feelings of inadequacy, still fret far too much over the impression I make on others, but those are just hobbies. For the most part, when I step back and survey the life I’ve created, I have to say, “Not bad.”
In a way, though, this new found satisfaction is a liability because I'm increasingly impatient with gloomy people who have locked themselves into a misery schtick and don’t seem interested in finding their way out. This is a particular problem because in the past, these were kind of people I chose as friends. Misery does, in fact, like company. But now that I'm no longer miserable, I have a handful of friendships I don't know how to continue.
I’m not talking about people who, like me, enjoy recreational bitching and moaning. Again, I consider that a perfectly viable hobby, although I now prefer it be diluted with occasional happy talk. I’m talking about people who are chronically dissatisfied with their lives and refuse to take hold and make changes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People suck. Life is disappointing. Money is tight. We haven’t lived up to our potential. Relationships are hard. George Bush is a butthead.
But the temperature here in Dallas probably won’t hit 100 again this year. The State Fair starts Friday. Sarah Palin provides ample fodder for recreational bitching and moaning. And there’s a new episode of Mad Men on Sunday night.
Life ain’t so bad in the day-to-day.
OK, I do feel bad about eating Popeye’s for dinner last night but this, too, will pass.
I’m sympathetic to misery. I’ve been headshrunk and medicated and self helped and group therapied and all that over the years. And it all works. So does exercise. So does identifying goals and working towards them. So does stepping back and taking inventory. (The expression “count your blessings” makes me want to hurl, so I won’t say that.)
I’m sure I’ll be unhappy again. I am genetically and temperamentally disposed to recurring unhappiness. But when I feel it coming on, I rally all the resources I’ve gathered over the years and fight back.
You can too and probably should because I promise you: If you’ve been unhappy for a long time, you’re friends are tired of hearing about it.
(Hm, I’m griping about gripey people. How confusing.)
OK, here’s some food for thought. My second-favorite podcast (after This American Life) is called All in the Mind. It’s an Australian radio show about all things related to the brain and mind. Natasha Mitchell is a wonderful interviewer, the topics are fascinating, the guests are top-of-the-line.
The show recently had a two-part series of brain plasticity, which is the ability of our brains to change even into adulthood. In Part 2 (here), Mitchell talks to psychiatrist Dr Norman Doidge about plasticity as it applies to psychotherapy. Think therapy is just a lot of self-indulgent blah-blah? Scientists are beginning to home in on actual neurological changes that take place in the brain as you do the work. (And yeah, it is work. Hard work.)
So there.
Get happy, people. Or risk getting on my nerves.
9 comments:
Wow, you just gave a textbook example of something called "socioemotional selectivity theory"--the idea that we get happier as we get older because we learn to nudge the downers out of our lives, and surround ourselves with happier people who give us joy. Today you are very psychological :)
Oh, I'm always at least a little bit psycho.
Great comment, though. I love fitting neatly into theories. (Really.)
The search for "happiness" is bullshit. Once you realize that you are an insignificant speck of matter who had no say in your own existance and the end game is the same no matter what you do, then you make the decision to either "be happy" or miserable. I choose to "be" neither and reserve the right to bitch, complain and comment when it is needed and not be labled unhappy. Old people only do it missionary?
Sure, the end game might be the same, but the road there involves choices and responsibilities. I'm not opposed bitching and complaining (obviously) but I am increasingly bored by broken records. If your shoes hurt, get new shoes.
I don't suggest happiness is a static destination that can be reached, but I think it is a state of mind worth working for. I've been miserable and I've been happy and happy is better.
And re: missionary--nah. But that's a secret old people must keep from the young or it might freak 'em out.
And, thinking on this further, my Pollyanna-ish rant doesn't preclude some healthy existentialism. I do believe that, no matter how many people we love or are loved by, we are each essentially alone in this world. As Joe Ely put it, "You've got to go to sleep alone." No, I don't walk with God. I walk with Jack.
That's why I think we are responsible for striving to live lives as free from self-inflicted pain as possible. (Unless that's what a person enjoys, which is that person's business. In which case, the pain is pleasure, anyway, so the person actually is happy. If you follow me.)
I don't expect anyone else to take responsibility for my happiness or to even care whether or not I am happy. I go to sleep alone. But that also means I will care only so much and for so long about people who dig themselves into miserable ruts and obstinately stay there.
Maybe it's just semantics, but I find myself feeling contented. I'm satisfied with where I am in life. Everything's not perfect, but I no longer need it to be. The important things, I've got. The sad things still make me sad, but they don't change the basic contentedness. That has only come with maturity.
Cynthia
Good point, Cynthia. Maybe the word "happy" is just too loaded. Happiness may have become some sort of unreachable Holy Grail that we eventually grow to just resent.
Sophia,
While people can tinker around the edges, I think your temperament is set at birth.
I wish there was an easy way to get happy ~
I agree about the temperament. I will always be disposed more to the dark than to the light. But I am so far from the darkness in which I used to live, I have to believe that some degree of real change is possible. Your results may vary, of course.
And yeah, I do believe that some depression is intractable. Mental illness is serious shit. I don't downplay that.
At the same time, I think that's less common than plain old life-aggravated, stuck-in-a-rut, reliving old scripts depression. And that can change. And we have so many tools at our disposal these days. If one doesn't work, try another. Try them in different combinations. Try different people. Try different drugs. Try massages.
I didn't say anything about easy, though! It's hard and requires courage and persistence. The dark hole may always lurk nearby. I know it does for me. But I think depression is a disease you learn to manage rather try to than cure.
By the way, I think back to periods of my life and wonder how my friends put up with me and my litany of woes. I'm pretty sure that during my last years in my last full-time job, people started diving under their desks when they saw me and my black cloud coming.
A couple of times, I had to ask my bosses to lighten my work load because I was having difficulty managing through the fog of misery.
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