If You're Not Happy All The Time You're Doing It Right
We spend a lot of time hoping for happiness. Parents wish for their children above all else to be happy. We strive to find careers and partners who make us happy. It's even ingrained in the fabric of our country that the pursuit of happiness is our inalienable right.
There's nothing wrong with seeking happiness. But in today’s age of social media constantly flooding our timelines with other people’s apparent joy it's harder than ever to make space for the other emotions that come with being human.
It's easy to forget that most people use social media to share a highlight reel of their most fun and noteworthy moments. For every photo of a friend at a cool event or looking picturesque with her significant other/children, there are ten times as many instances of frustration, annoyance, disappointment, boredom and so on not captured online. Without recognizing this discrepancy though, you can find yourself comparing your own life with these curated portrayals and feel like something is wrong with you for not being so shiny, happy and perfect all the time.
One of the best pieces of advice Jenn has ever given me is “be gentle with yourself.” Don't put pressure on yourself to always be happy. You're not only allowed to experience negative emotions but they can even be good for you.
“Why do you want me to be miserable all the time, Kara, you cold-hearted knave?!” I know some of you may be asking that now (but maybe not quite with that verbiage). I'm not proposing a constant state of misery. I hope we all spend the bulk of our days feeling content and happy. But I'm suggesting we make room to also accept when life doesn't feel so peachy keen without feeling ashamed.
I'm suggesting embracing the tougher times with this two-step approach:
Don't deny when you have an unpleasant feeling.
Don't dwell too long in the moment. Let it have its place and let it pass to make room for the next emotion.
This is definitely easier said than done. That's OK too. But by acknowledging when you're feeling sad, mad, bad and not glad (sorry to get too Seussian here) instead of pushing your emotion away gives you power over it. When I take a step back and admit to myself I'm upset or in a foul mood it suddenly becomes anticlimactic to me. It goes something like this:
Me: Everyone and everything is grating to me today and nothing is going right! Ugh why??
Also me: Waiiiit a minute, I'm unhappy because (insert trivial or tremendous reason causing my negative emotion).
[beat]
And again me: Oh, is that what it is? OK then, guess I'll ride this out until something makes me laugh again.
SPOILER ALERT: Something always inevitably will happen that makes me laugh again.
It takes too much energy to hide the truth from myself. Checking in on my emotions frequently has helped me see through to the root of my feelings faster too.
Sometimes our emotions prove to be more complex and bigger than ourselves. If that happens, there's equally no shame in asking for help working through them.
If you're looking for role models who accept and embrace life’s darker, tougher emotions, I highly recommend watching Daria or anything featuring Archie’s Jughead Jones.
There's another aspect that makes negative emotions surprisingly worthwhile. I’m not sure if this harkens more to my dorky lit-major side or my inner 2000s emo side that keeps standards like My Chemical Romance and Yellowcard on repeat some days. What am I blabbering on about? It's the idea that experiencing anything other than peace and joy will broaden and give depth to your perspective.
Go with me on this one. I've always appreciated songs and stories but it was only when I went through my own break-ups and felt my own losses that I fully understood the complicated and often contradictory lyrics and lines from my favorite works. Of course, this isn't advocating you purposefully seek out pain. But if you live on this planet chances are high you're going to bump up against your own personal tragedies.
While it may hurt as you cope with whatever comes your way, know that these experiences enrich your perspective and will help make you a better person. Aside from the already mentioned amazing art and productivity that can arise from channeling your pain into something positive, perspective helps you handle future hardships.
When Hurricane Sandy devastated our city by the sea in 2013, like my neighbors, I lived for a time with no running water, no heat, no electricity and the constant stress of not knowing how to even begin helping my family and friends rebuild. Do I hope to go through that again? Absolutely not. But can I find something to be grateful for from that experience? Absolutely.
Despite the hardship, when I look back at that horrible time that's still affecting our community years later, here are some things I do feel grateful for:
My level of compassion deepened - not only for my neighbors but for anyone similarly lacking in those basic necessities for whatever reason. It sucked and no one should go through that.
It made me more proactive in wanting to help where I can - that came in many forms. When Jenn had the brainchild about starting RipLB because part of the rise we’ve seen in drug/alcohol use and preventable tragedies can be tied to the traumatic stress of Sandy and its fallout, I jumped in when I previously may have hesitated. When I now see news of people suffering, from tornado victims in Oklahoma to the people of Standing Rock in need of necessities, I send supplies when before I may have changed the channel.
It connected me to my community - I saw the best in people who rose up and aided each other during the worst of times. There's a certain understanding we all share that's built in part on the fear we felt when our streets flooded and buildings burned, when we stood dazed the morning after trying to process all the damage while the National Guard rolled by in tanks and we found our boardwalk shredded. Our community's resiliency floored me and strengthened my bond to my neighbors.
It made me appreciate everything I had - I will never take having a toilet that flushes for granted again. (And there's more I’m thankful for but to have a real moment here that's likely TMI, I don't know if I will ever forget the strange shame I felt over pooping in a plastic bag so hopefully we can at least laugh about it here).
Bad feelings will hit all of us, at any time and for a million reasons. But we have the power to use them to better ourselves. We can't control the circumstance but we can decide how we contextualize our emotions and how we respond to them - our perspective and directive lie within our grasp.
And if sometimes your response doesn't work as you planned, be gentle with yourself and try again.