On "choosing" to be happy

Okay, I have a confession to make before I dive into today's post. I love reading blogs. Seriously, I can't get enough of them. I lose hours on end scanning my favorite blogs (I wish I were exaggerating).

For me, the best blogs trigger an examination of my core values. I had one of these experiences as I was reading through one of my favorites today: a blog about love.

Today's post is a response to an article I was reading about choosing happiness, "Love Story: Will there be magic?" I recommend reading it through, and assessing your own reactions, before continuing ahead with my post.

[Stop here and read their blog post] ;)

I'm willing to bet that most people have heard some version of the "choose to be happy" speech. If you're anything like me, you might even agree that it has something worthwhile to glean. It appeals to the "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps" mentality among many of us. We want to believe we're in control of our happiness - because if not, then who is?

...And yet, whatever warm-fuzzies this idea gives me is usually quickly eclipsed by a stronger, more urgent feeling of hot indignation.

Stay with me for a bit here...

As I've been growing up (it's a process), I've believed that a secret to happiness is discipline -- especially over the ever-changing, sometimes explosive emotions that one experiences in a lifetime: anger, hurt, sadness, love. I learned to be skeptical of my inner voice because it can lie. It can trick me. So I chose to fear it, and sometimes shun it. I chose to "be happy" in spite of what I felt.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that happiness should not be predicated upon the "if" statements of life - it ought not depend on if I get into law school, if I can take back the hurt I caused someone I love, or if I can afford to live in a great apartment in Boston (preferably with a balcony and a view).

No - my happiness shouldn't depend on whether I always get my way. So, I believe in choosing happiness as long as it means that I am sincerely finding joy in the journey in spite of what challenges arise, or what patience is required to make my dreams come true.

BUT "choosing" to be happy feels incomplete to me.

It sounds overly simplistic, no? - and maybe even a little insulting. As a human being with real passions and dreams, I find this mentality difficult to relate with. I worry that I'm being attacked for wanting more, and believing that I deserve to fight for more...so we need to further refine this idea.

Allow me to illustrate.

I had a very difficult time speaking up for myself as I progressed into my major in college. I studied International Relations - a major popular among well-informed, middle-class and politically hotheaded Caucasian males. Oy. I felt very out of place.

As an immigrant and a female, I often worried that my peers expected me to stand down. I imagined that I should be happy enough that I had made it to college at all, especially in America. I felt that I should be grateful for my full-ride scholarship, and that showing gratitude meant that I should keep my head down. I was scared of being unconventional, of sounding misinformed, and of rocking the boat. At times, I feared that if I spoke up, I would seem ungrateful.

I was so wrong for thinking this way.

And I'm scared that in "choosing" to be happy, too many people make mistakes like this one. In believing that we ought to accept our circumstances passively, we put out the fire burning within us. We pass up opportunities for greatness. We waste away our potential.

So, here are my two cents...

Choosing to be happy is not enough.

I experience a knee-jerk twinge of disgust whenever I hear that I can "choose" to be happy because it feels like these voices are pressing me to settle for less, which is completely against my nature, my faith, and the God I believe in. It feels like I am being told that I should be less than what I am capable of.

As well-intentioned as it seems, I fear that those voices would have be embrace silent mediocrity and fall into submission to voices louder, and stronger than my own.

And mediocrity makes me cringe. It might be my greatest fear - to reach for less than what I am capable of achieving. To live less, laugh less, speak less, love less than I am able.

It's difficult to draw a line between finding joy in the journey and resigning myself to unfortunate circumstances.

I've made terrible mistakes as I've tried to strike that balance.

I could have spoken up more in college, in spite of my insecurities. I could have learned more by being willing to risk failure. I could have fought more and waited more for the things I wanted most - the things I loved. Instead, I shrunk back. I chose to accept my circumstances and succumb to them, and I regret it every day.

So here's my theory:

Instead of "choosing to be happy," I'd rather choose to be the master of my fate (See "Invictus" by William E Henley).

I believe in being happy about where you're headed. I believe in finding beauty in your best efforts, even when they are not enough...even when you fail. And you will fail, beautifully.

I believe in letting go of the things that we can't change...but fighting like hell for the things we want that are within our control.

There is NO way that I'm ever going to subscribe to the "this-is-good-enough" mentality. I never want to shrink back because of fear or pressure, though it's tempting and incredibly comfortable.

I believe there is glory in giving your dreams your all, even if giving it your all means you fail - and I have failed, time and time again - at a great cost to myself and those I love most...but I believe that failure can become a sacred experience that unites mankind with deity as we avidly seek to become better, and to learn from our mistakes, and press on igniting the fire burning within our souls.

So, yeah, I'll choose to be happy.

I'll choose to try to let go of the past wrongs I can never take back - those that still keep me up at night. I'll believe that there is grace and forgiveness, even for someone as mixed up as me.

But I will never be "fine" with being less than what I'm capable of being. I refuse to settle and accept the cards I've been dealt. I refuse to go down without a good fight. I refuse to give up on my passions, my loves, my dreams.

I am the captain of my soul.

The Weight of the World

I've been chained to an idea for several years.

It shaped the way that I thought. The way I lived. And it shaped the way I interacted with the world around me. My parents, my husband, and my close friends can all attest to the truth of this statement.

I'm going to spoil the ending for you...this idea was unexpectedly shattered to bits tonight, but I think that's ok.

As reflected in my previous post, this same idea brought several aspects of my identity into question, especially recently. It did always had a way of doing that. It was back, of my own doing of course. Unveiling my vulnerability. My weakness.

It made me question the very foundation around which I have built my life...and without giving away an indelicate amount of information, I want need to write about it.

I fell in love with an idea. For years. No matter how hard I tried to move on, it lived inside of me, and I kept it safe because I have been afraid of losing it.

I didn't really ever want to give it up. Effortlessly, it defined me. I surrendered myself to the belief that my life would always be incomplete without it. After so many years, it still mattered more than I am proud to admit.

I guess I thought that as long as I believed it, it would be self sustaining. Little nothing else would matter as much as long as I kept it alive. It would shock you if you only knew. It sure shocked me. I refused to let anything else touch it. As the years passed, I polished it, and kept it safely tucked away from the harm of those who tried to taint it. Pretending, when the time came, that I had completely given it up...willingly, in fact...that I had given up. I smiled gracefully as I paraded on my own personally paved road through hell.

Because I lied. That's right. I lied.

I have never been as addicted to anything else. I never stopped believing in it.

It was taken away from me. I stood at a crossroads sincerely unsure of what to do when I realized it was all a dream. A fantasy. I'm still a little shocked, but at least the apathy that has only increased over the years has gone away. I am feeling again, and it's a definitely different than how I would have had it, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I believed in something that simply was not true. The weight of the world was taken away from me. I was freed. Unwillingly, but nevertheless, free. Freed from regret and confusion. Because I know. There is no doubt anymore. I doubted it all for something that just wasn't there. I had been wrong.

It's that simple. A little anticlimactic, I know...but that's the truth. I think know I would have believed it forever if the idea hadn't been taken away from me. I would have always wandered, and made my way back to it. I would have changed my life to suit it.

I hesitate to write about this because I have never felt capable of adequately doing this post justice, even thou it's been a long time coming. I imagine many more will follow...with perhaps less ambiguity, or great. But I needed to put into words the feelings I had this night...the way I'm feeling now. I need something to accompany the devastation, the relief, the fear, the confidence, the tears, and the smiles. So bittersweet.

Because my life changed in a moment, and while the world around me looms on, my world was changed. In however small a way, I need that to matter.

And so, I write.

__________

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed” (Alice Walker).