Happy

             A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. (Proverbs 15:13)

I must begin with my standard disclaimer. What I’m sharing is not an appeal to pity, nor is it blaming anyone. It’s just part of my story and you’ve probably heard at least part before. Part of today’s Bible study homework is to consider the stories we believe about happiness. I’ve just listened to a book on the subject and one of the big stories we believe that he mentioned was that we associate happiness with things being as we want them. When we get the job, the marital status, the contract, the house, the dog, or the new outfit, book, plant, or “toy,” then we’re happy. Until we see a different thing we want or the thing we got produces diminishing returns. Then we’re not happy any more.

I spent a great deal of my life in this cycle  and at least as much of my life believing that happiness was not something I would ever have for more than 10 minutes at a time. Anger and depression were the cycles in which I existed, at least in my memory. But I have told people for the past several years that 2020 was probably the best year of my life, and the years since have been, over all positive. Even in the four years before 2020, there were signs of improvement.

So what changed? What happened in the last nine years that would lead me to say that now, I’m basically happy while then, I was not? The obvious change in 2015 was that I quit a job at which I felt as if I was under attack most of the time. My fault? Their fault? No fault? It was a job in which, really, what I did didn’t matter. That wasn’t exactly true, but it was how I felt. And my general sense was that this condition would continue throughout eternity, literally.

I quit there to be my father’s caregiver, and over the next four years, I managed to reach the point that Black Friday no longer meant depression for the next six weeks (or more.) The stress changed from “under attack” to simple “not good enough.” I found some solace in color, therefore yarn. But I also started writing fiction, which exercised my mind and awakened some long-buried dreams. I had learned not to have dreams back in the 80s or 90s. Whatever dreams survived “life” was crushed by employment, but writing brought back the possibility- if not of “success,” then at least of exploration, creativity, and challenge.

My father died in 2019, and in 2020 I started moving forward. I self-published my first and second book and started researching a location for my second series of books. COVID hit. I started learning to forage and garden. I got a job at a garden center. I got more involved in crafting, cooking, building, growing – more involved in living.

A long, boring story, but today’s challenge is about beliefs about happiness. It may be different for different people, but what I’ve found is that happiness is not necessarily having everything your way, but being in a position where you are able to explore, grow, change, try, do, be, and have a positive influence (AKA help.)  It is being able to look toward the future and not see it as an unending hell, which means that happiness requires hope. It’s not the story we were told, but it’s something I can actually live.