Happiness

2004-09-15 - 11:47 a.m.

I was chatting with a friend, who I'm going to call Wryly, mainly because he's wry. Oh heck, let's just pretend this paragraph is all about re-introducing Wryly: he's the friend of Pookie's who moved in next door last year. He's also the friend who, two years ago, I assualted in a drunken rage and wrote a really guilty entry about, and then stressed about it for an entire year before I met Wryly again and found that he'd forgiven/forgotten the incident. Anyway, since then we've been spending time throwing a football around. He's a bit of a jock, so any sports lingo that I use correctly is probably due to his influence. He also wants to help guide me in my next project, music appreciation, which I'll gladly accept even though I think some of his musical tastes are a little weird.

Anyway, we were chatting the other day about happiness and how you get it, and we kind of both agreed (with amendments added later) that a large part of being happy is having a long-term view of the future. It's easier to work through tough times so long as you can hold the idea that most things are temporary, that 5, 10, 50 years down the road anything can happen, and some parts of that "anything" are good things.

Thinking about that today, I realized that another thing that helps me stay content is an appreciation for the fact that at any given time there are millions of events that might affect me that I don't know about. Even as I sit here typing on the computer at a job I don't really enjoy, there might be someone else, maybe on the other side of the world, about to offer me a fabulous job (sign my guestbook if that person is you), or maybe there's just a friend who's thinking of a gift to give me, or maybe plans are being made for a fun weekend with a bunch of people. There's undoubtedly bad stuff happening, too, but the thing is there's no way to know, and if I'm able to anticipate a future, I'm sure to get one or two unexpectedly good surprises.

The last thing, maybe, I need for happiness, is a good understanding of what I can control and what I can't. There's some crappy stuff that's going to happen, to me and to the people I love, and there's not much I can do about it. But, there are some crappy things that I can avoid. I know that getting drunk can lead me to uncontrollable rages, saying things I don't mean, and being hurtful, usually to those I care about the most. As an example. By choosing to not drink, I've helped make my future a little bit more bright, and maybe I'm avoiding some "unavoidable" consequences down the road. Once I can see what things I can change or control, and once I make myself change or control them, it becomes easier to live with the things I don't have control over.

So, only 3 things needed for happiness. I just wish those three things were easier to keep in mind.

Cheers,

The Magus

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