Right now in my life I am incredibly happy. I think it’s honest to say that I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. I could go through and list all the things that are currently going well, of which, right now, there happen to be many, although I’m pretty sure that this happiness is the result of something other than the matter of things simply going well.
For one thing, I have reached a place where I am beginning to understand, finally, what makes me happy. I mean truly happy. This seems like such a simple concept, to understand what makes us happy, but it’s not. It’s far from simple. It’s far from simple because it requires first another action that is also far from simple: not shying away from one’s own feelings. In the process of understanding what makes us happy, we must also understand was doesn’t make us happy. What hurts. I know now that reading page upon page of exquisitely crafted prose makes me genuinely happy. As does watching my children, their faces flushed and marked by the earth, swordfight with sticks out in the yard. I also know now that having one too many glasses of wine and deciding to Google people I haven’t spoken to in years just because I’m feeling “curious,” does not make me happy. It leaves me with the most peculiar sense of being alone in the world. I am aware of this now, though I didn’t used to be.
I have also learned that I have a list, not a long one, of certain happiness requirements. I know, for instance, that I require a certain amount of time alone to read and write because these two activities, reading and writing, are central to my well-being. They are central to my well-being not because I can’t survive without them but because I can’t be happy without them. I know this because I have tried. Here’s the tricky part. Currently I don’t make any money either reading or writing. Neither one of these activities helps support my family. Both are for me and only me. Everything about them suggests that they shouldn’t take precedence on my to-do list, everything about them but this: whenever I try to convince myself that this solitude I yearn for like clear cool water on parched lips isn’t absolutely necessary, I am left with nothing more than a brittle shell of myself, a self that can crumble at any given moment and be blown away like dust.
Happiness, I’ve learned, also means not falling into the trap of isolating myself, believing that I can, or that I have to, figure life out on my own.
It means not comparing myself to others
It means remembering to say thank you often.
Of course it’s not all so cut and dry. In the midst of all this happiness there is also upheaval. Isn’t that the way it always goes? Right now in my life I am engaged in the work of turning over stones. Heavy stones that have been sitting there for years. Stones so deeply embedded in the earth that they don’t want to move. And yet it’s time for them to move. But change is hard. Right now in my life there is uncertainty, the kind of uncertainty that goes hand and hand with change. This uncertainty requires courage. Courage to trust that I’m making the right decisions. Courage to allow the cards to fall where they will. Courage to, as Rilke says, live the questions.
And this is mainly how I know that I am happy: I have a growing awareness of the fact that life isn’t black and white. I can be confused and hurt by a relationship and at the same time feel an enormous amount of love toward the person who has both confused and hurt me. I can have a day of feeling mostly depressed and out of nowhere be brought to my knees by the thin amber light filtering through the kitchen after dinner. Both heartbreak and heartbreaking beauty can, and generally do, exist together, in the same day, in the same hour, side by side, in the very same moment. So I can just stop waiting for it to be otherwise.
And of course there is always the robin. The robin who gathers sticks for the nest she has built in a small evergreen tree just outside our backdoor. There was a nest in this same tree last year and the year before. I can watch the robin with her sharp black eyes, her diligence, and her humble determination to complete the task at hand. And I can remember what a privilege it is to be here, witnessing this sacred act, living this prismatic and bountiful life, even when it hurts.