What makes you happy? Not on a grand scale like falling in love or giving birth. Not in a life changing way like winning the lottery or inheriting a winery in Provence from an uncle you didn’t know you had. But the minutiae of life that brings a smile to your face or provides unexpected joy on even the darkest day. You find a five pound note in an old pair of trousers maybe or just for once the train arrives on time. The man who always scowls at you in the bank smiles and says thank you, or you are just in time to get the last seat on the bus.
Mignon McLaughlin wrote "Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness”. We soon discover that it is not the much anticipated big occasions that bring lasting happiness, often these are followed by a sense of anti climax. It isn’t the big events in life that make us happy on a day to day basis, of course they create sweeping highs on the graph of our life but like all highs they are often followed by a low and life then feels dull in comparison. If we need to live life on a roller coaster in order to register happiness, every high will need to be ever higher than the one before, leaving us with much further to fall.
It is much more a state of well being; feeling safe, being loved, and having unwavering support are the building blocks of our happiness. If we build on these foundations we can treat times of even the most abject misery as a diversion in the path of life, to be endured, to travel along for only as long as it lasts, and then to return to a road that is familiar and less fraught, where we can begin to feel happy again.
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” James Oppenheim
Title quote by John Barrymore