Colleen Rogers
I am what they call a
dowager, a Debbie Downer, a Negative Nellie.
I do not look on the bright side of things. I have a preemptive contingency plan for
when the “other shoe drops”, because, in my view, it usually does. It is very hard for someone like me to openly
recognize joy on-the-daily. As I “gain
experience”, I take note of more in-your-face difficulties, and I woman
suffragette the grocery list of tragedies that have befallen me. I am a "fake it till you make it" kinda gal.
When I sit in reflection, I customarily focus on losses. I have
lost my beloved parents, some incredible grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
I cannot even begin to discuss my rainbowed pets or angel-ed friends without a flow
of tears after many years still reigning.
I have daily missed bosses and cherished colleagues I haven’t even seen for
years. I have had little “micro-deaths” from each shift of a job or a home. It has been a merciless
struggle for me to acclimate to new neighborhoods or unfamiliar work sites. Wrestling with these transitions has sometimes been
a brutally tough induction ceremony against newfound expectations.
It is has become a recent
habit to second guess the places where I have nested. I often wonder if I could have done better
for myself, or lived more adventurously.
Maybe I should have aligned myself with others who might have stressed
me less, or offered me more than they took.
I think about things that have happened to me, and I feel an exclusivity
of amplified regret that surely is only mine to bear. I believe many times that I am solitary in heart-holding
these daily “bereavements”. Of course, I
am most assuredly not alone.
The regretful dowry I bear
may not often be public, or visible, and sometimes can only be seen as a
glimmer of coined shrouds that only I can count, but my dowry is no more weighty
than the offerings presented by us all.
I watch us in our common
areas, and I see our situational barbells pressing down upon us, causing our
bodies to ground down, our choices crushing us into reactive zombie-bees. We live beneath a fake whimsical umbrella of our
own notions of control.
I used to think that my
life would be the result of a series of full-bodied, free-willed choices. I was certain that I absolutely would never
land anywhere without well-considered, cautious deliverance. I felt that every decision I adjudicated
would be a direct bulls-eye hit on a planned trajectory. I played confident that I would end-game exactly
as I preordained the victory of my life to be.
In reality, I
have often ended up with the “Life Of Not”.
This is NOT the job I would have wanted, NOT the house I would have
picked, NOT always the people I hoped would surround me. The evolution of the “How Did I Get Here” autobiography
really sneaks up on everyone. The true
trek of a our destiny is actually more like “The Pokemon Go of the Unexpected”.
The fact is, we never really determine our lives. We are wholly
delusional if we expect to construct a life of our own perfect selection. Things happen on our journey that we don’t
consider--there may be an unexpected opportunity, an uncoupling, an
unfathomable loss, some unhealthiness, or a road of unanticipated detours.
Because we are in flux so frequently, achieving perpetual happiness is a fallacy. We can’t easily find joy when it falls
between the cracks of our own challenging re-adjustments. Happiness is rarely harvested naturally
because our lives are never in corn rows of alignment. The fallacy of happiness is that we
will somehow just fall into its’ state of being. Somehow, happiness will "just appear before
us", like a single four leaf clover in an expansive meadow. In actuality, happiness is truly a search and
recovery mission.
Every day, we have to seek
out tiny moments where just a few things are in place, and in
those tic tocs of grace, we see our thread-beam of joy. The happiness fallacy can dissolve when
we pet our dog, hug our child, kiss our partner, or take a brief nature walk. It is not the grandiose, overt moments of
the obvious “special event” happiness that we should all wait to embrace. It is truly
the "in the moment" small parcels of joy, those that are on-the-reveal
daily, that we should attempt to detect.
We need to expand our vision
for recognizing happiness. We should realize that happiness is often a quietly restorative, surprisingly momentary
gift. What characterizes happiness as time-fleeting
and rare is exactly the reason why it is so precious, and why we cannot expect
to find perpetual, unyielding joy.
For those of us who believe
that life has left us bereft of happiness, it is truly because we have failed
to do our detective work. We are not discovering our little, nearly untraceable, moments of joy. We have exclusively focused on seeking something on the
"larger, bigger, better" scale. But, if we wait for the “grandiose”,
we will never sustain much ready joy.
Few of our days boast events like weddings, promotions, graduations, the anticipation of moving day, or the excitement of the "new car smell". So, it behooves us to take in and requisition
something fleeting, "petite", and more sweetly subtle to give us pause and make us smile. Only in these briefly accessible moments will the
cracks in our happiness remain filled. When we master this unearthing, something more grand will only make the joys of life just a little more clearly visible.
"I'm beginning to recognize that real happiness isn't something large and looming on the horizon ahead, but something small, numerous, and already here.
The smile of someone you love. A decent breakfast. The warm sunset. Your little everyday joys all lined up in a row."--Beau Taplin
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