The paperwork's done. I came home to noise from the hard to house tenants in the building next door so I have closed the window and put in earplugs to block the noise pollution from someone's stereo. I would be miserable right now without the earplugs. Yes, I am responsible for my happiness but it is also important to have the tools available.
It is difficult at times to imagine being responsible for your own happiness. We are such a shallow, consumerist, dependent kind of society. Happiness is what other things or other people make us. The idea of contentment and joy coming from within the individual is still widely viewed as cute and New-Agey, or quasi-spiritual. Or maybe it says something about how sick most of us really are, of how incomplete we are with our obsessive need to depend on others for our wellbeing.
This isn't to say that our wellbeing isn't easily impacted by others. We are a social animal and of course we are always going to be impacted by one another, just as we also do the impacting. We are often not aware of the effect we have on others and so we play the victim.
The noise from the building next door is no longer a problem and I have taken out the earplugs. I am reminded of my first apartment, an attic apartment on top of a tall ancient house at Twenty-Eighth and Main in Vancouver (still standing). When I became unemployed I would spend some of the cool November and December afternoons curled up with a book to read. Then it would come flying through my window like a volley of invisible rocks, the raucous enraged beast voice of a very angry and rather stupid looking woman at the bottle depot across the way, screaming and swearing and chewing out her alleged husband. She could roar worse than a howler monkey. They were both sad, unattractive looking people, round, pudgy, oppressed and rather poor looking. He would manfully endure her abuse and I would wonder if I should one day go out there and ask her what she was screaming about. I was just eighteen at the time.
Now that dinner is heating on the stove I am going to have a look at the daily papers...
I just checked dinner, which is heating slowly: a black bean chili I made yesterday with leftover broccoli. I am also enjoying a banana. I can't say that I'm especially happy right now though we could call me content. It would be nice to get more signatures (now thirty-one) on my anti-homelessness petition. Here is the link again, should any of you be inclined to sign it: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/
Creating our own happiness is really very easy. It begins, I think, with trusting our own resourcefulness. I have no one to come home to at the end of the day, since I live alone. This means that I will have a quiet time, that I can feel emotionally safe and not have to perform for anyone. I have no one to make me miserable and I have no one to make miserable. I am not lonely. I also have friends. I have lots to read, interesting things to hear on the radio and see on YouTube. I can also paint and draw. I might email a friend or make arrangements to meet someone new for coffee in order to practice Spanish (for me) and English (for them)
My work day was pleasant and productive: two positive encounters in coffee shops with clients and a cancellation this morning, which I spent enjoying a long walk in the beautiful morning to a favourite coffee shop where I drew for over an hour.
Even if things don't always go as we want to them (and really, Gentle Reader, how often do they?), even if we have limitations and the hell of other people to cope with, I think for the most part that we have very little to complain about. There are always going to be obstacles. I know that there are growing concerns here where I live about housing and food security. Life is getting increasingly expensive and many of us are feeling the pinch. We are living in an insecure world with a megalomaniacal fascist waiting to be inaugurated to the Oval Office south of the border in a couple of months, climate change, and populist despots being elected to lead a growing number of countries.
We can still create and appreciate beauty and we can still reach out in friendship and kindness to those around us. We can still be happy, and in the joy that we discover in the deep wellsprings of the spirit we can also spread joy to those around us.
Even if things don't always go as we want to them (and really, Gentle Reader, how often do they?), even if we have limitations and the hell of other people to cope with, I think for the most part that we have very little to complain about. There are always going to be obstacles. I know that there are growing concerns here where I live about housing and food security. Life is getting increasingly expensive and many of us are feeling the pinch. We are living in an insecure world with a megalomaniacal fascist waiting to be inaugurated to the Oval Office south of the border in a couple of months, climate change, and populist despots being elected to lead a growing number of countries.
We can still create and appreciate beauty and we can still reach out in friendship and kindness to those around us. We can still be happy, and in the joy that we discover in the deep wellsprings of the spirit we can also spread joy to those around us.
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