Happiness

If I were to arrive in an afterlife looking the age of when I was the happiest, what age would that be?  That's the question that my therapist posed to me this week.  I told her that I'm still coming into that age.

As we talked and reflected, the last year and a half of my life ran through my mind.  It has contained some of my most challenging moments, grief that overwhelmed me, fear, uncertainty, indecision, anger, etc.  Despite all that, it has been the happiest time of my life so far.

In Spanish their two different verbs that can be used with the word happy that are really relevant to this discussion.  Sometimes other languages have words to express a concept that English is lacking.  I've always liked the contrast of these two phrases and actually written several poems about it over the past couple of decades.  I should try and dig up one or two of them up.  Or maybe not, there is a depth in my understanding today that wasn't there a few years ago when I wrote those poems.

"Estoy feliz" ("I am happy") expresses a moment of happiness, an emotion that is fleeting.  It's what you say when something good happens to you or you celebrate something good happening to someone you care about.  This is the idea of happiness that too often we chase.  It's the thrill of the dopamine high.  But it's temporary and it doesn't take much for it to fade away - a challenge, a bad day, a disappointment, etc.

"Soy feliz" ("I am happy") expresses a state of being.  It's not created by things that happen to us.  It's created through intention, authenticity, and the ways we choose to build amidst the ups and downs of life.  A bad day doesn't destroy a state of being happy.  

If someone had asked me this question a couple years ago, I would have given a pretty superficial answer.  I would have pointed to a particular memory or external circumstance.  I would have focused on the fleeting emotion of happiness.  

For most of my life, I did a lot of floating through life.  I responded to what happened to me.  I wasn't proactive about my own dreams, desires, needs, preferences, etc.  The way I experienced life was always secondary to how someone else was experiencing life.  And through it all, I was just trying to capture and hang onto the highs that were within my reach as I floated by.

Now, I build with intention.  I am far more in tune with myself, my dreams, my desires, my needs, my preferences, etc. and I proactively seek out experiences to build a life that aligns.  As I result, I now experience happiness more as a state of being than a fleeting emotion.

I posed this question on Threads.  Twenty seven people responded, most of them with just a number.  There was only one person who said that it is still yet to come.  Two said they never think they will be happy which was so sad to read.  The rest pinpointed a particular age in the past that ranged from under 3 years old all the way to 72 years old.  None of them explained why they selected that particular age so I don't know if their responses to the question were based on the fleeting emotion of happiness or a state of being happy.  Were they answering as I would have answered a couple of years ago or were they answering with an understanding like I have today?

I asked my parents the question.  They momentarily complained about the idea of bringing their aches and pains into the afterlife as they recognized the life lessons it took to get to a state of being happy.  My dad reminded me that he doesn't believe in "bad days" (he's told me this before).  He says we just have some days that are harder than others.

I asked a colleague who is around 60 years old this question and she looked down at herself and said something to the effect of "I guess this is what I will look like."  She is someone I have talked to a lot about coming into our own persons and building the life we want.  She now lives with intention and authenticity.

These conversations with my parents and colleague had depth to them and reflected an understanding of the difference between the emotion happiness and the state of being happy.  They were with people that have a lot of life experience and are all pretty growth oriented.  I realized that if we are always striving to be better, do better, be more intentional and authentic, etc. then we have the ability to both recognize the happiness of today and have hope for the happiness of the future.  So it will be hard to know when that happiest time is until we are able to look back at the length of the life we have lived.