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me on the street today and did a spot poll if i was happy, i would have to answer with a qualified yes. not a very good answer for the pollster, but certainly an honest one, as far as i am concerned. sure there are many things about the world today, that are upsetting and that i am less than happy about. no need to inventory my gripes about how things are going in the so-called real world, after all, most of those are events and things that i have limited or no power over, and fretting about what is coming from the primary resident of Casa Blanca, will not bring much joy into my life. of course, i could be richer, better looking, or younger, but bringing those itsy-bitsy details into my happiness equation is pointless as well. as i have discovered in the course of my recovery to date: things, people, attention or respect do not bring me any sort of real happiness either. by eliminating all of that, i can get sown to what it is that brings joy into my life and contributes to my well-being and happiness and focus on that, rather than all the outside crud that i once believed was so important.
do not get m]e wrong, i am still a member of the material world and i like bright, shiny and new stuff. i like having a roof over my head, knowing where my next meal will be coming from and having the freedom to choose whether or not i can accept my life as it is and be content with what i find. more and more i am finding bit is the stories i tell myself that contribute to my lack of serenity and my acceptance of life and not really what is going on. as i sat this morning and contemplated happiness in general, i kept coming back to the notion that being happy is not really something i can quantify. for me, there is no real means to measure how happy i am and more importantly i do not NEED to measure my happiness on some sort of scale. i came to the conclusion that being happy was a binary sort of feeling, either i am or i am not.
as a person who spent decades chasing happiness through chemistry and then more than a few years through external “stuff,” i find today, that i am happy and not just because of the “stuff” i have in my life. of course the real test of that theory would come if i could be happy with nothing at all. right now, my hope would be, that after i adjusted to those circumstances i could once again find balance, serenity and contentment, but i am not about to take a vow of poverty and give away all i have, i am not that spiritual, yet. as i prepare to walk out into the “real” today, i can be certain that my happiness is affected by how much of my personal power i give or fritter away. when i get frustrated, angry, disappointed or just plain self-entitled, i will do my best to remember that as undesirable as those things are, my happiness does not depend with everything going the way i want it to, all the time and maybe, just maybe there is a rhyme or reason i am blind to, just for today.

∞ DT ∞