Are You Happy?

I asked that question just yesterday.

Someone I've resumed a conversation with, after a gap of several years, seems continually beleaguered by responsibilities, committments, resentments, and a pent up torrent of unmet needs. It feels to me as if there is almost nothing that happens in this person's life that brings the sort of simple, unburdened joy that might point to being happy.

It caused me to think.

I've been unhappy. I've battled anger and frustration, and I've sunken into depression in the last couple of years. I know what it feels like to come awake in the morning, look at the coming day, and find no particular reason to rejoice -- over and over and over. I'm better now; good even, but I was there. I remember.

I remember, that through all those very dark days, He told me that I could choose to be happy. At the time, I felt as if He had no clue what I was dealing with, but I know now that He was precisely right. That is the problem with depression; what you believe to be true is so distorted that you can't see through all the muck you are swimming in to understand that all the world is not muck. If anything is going to change about how the world looks to you, then you have to get your head out of the muck and look at a less clouded view.

Easy to say. Hard to do.

I finally realized that I would have to change me if I was going to change the way I experienced the world. If where I was didn't "work" then what made sense was to find some way to change that. My fear, in the beginning, was that I would (again) have to leave my whole life behind and strike out on my own -- all alone. There were so-called professionals that pretty much endorsed that line of thinking. They told me in sometimes very direct ways, that the life I was living was the entire cause of my unhappiness, and that if I didn't "get out," I'd never ever be happy. I was perhaps just stubborn, but I refused to believe that. I decided that there was no one "out there" who would "fix" my problems. If I was going to save myself and save my "life," I had to take my courage in my hands and make the choices that would bring me to the place where I could live, once again, in joy.

I had support. I had people who loved me. I had the backing of His indomitable will. AND, I still needed to choose. For myself. To be happy. It hasn't come all at once, or smoothly. I don't think that I am completely "there" yet. On balance, though, I am able today to say that I am happy.

It is a choice. Daily. It takes action and focus. It is so very worth it -- to come to the quiet places in the daily rush, and notice how very good and lovely things are.

swan