Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash
I have come across many who doesn’t seem to believe that they deserve to be very happy; myself included. We do not feel that we are unhappy, neither do we think there is anything that is worth being very happy about.
Then there are also those who actively want to feel happy and pin their grand vision of how happiness might come about. Which, however, meant that they frequently end the day with an underlying disappointment that their vision of happiness hasn’t happen. Occasionally, it accumulates into an episode of existential crisis.
I weave in and out of these two types myself. Regardless of where I am at, I notice the sharp reluctance to allow myself to feel happy about the ‘small things’.
“There is nothing to shout about unless it is something really worth shouting about.”
“It is only worthwhile if I have worked very hard at it.”
“It’s utterly discounted if I receive help.”
“It’s likely just luck.”
“It’s nothing, I didn’t break an arm over it.”
Happiness couldn’t get to me because I believed it had to be earned.
And most of us are getting it wrong by striving to engineer events that we believe will make us happy. We don’t realise or understand that a feeling denied habitually, meant that the body and mind lost the resourcefulness to feel that particular way. If you want to feel ecstatic or joyful more often after years of habitually denying or suppressing them, deliberate intention and practice is needed to allow that feeling every day.
I now know I can allow joy in any moment in my life. But working with the old habits does take some conscious intention.
Maybe it begins by simply.. resting.
Letting go of needing that special thing to happen.
Neither is it about engineering joy.
Nor pushing away the negative.
Just resting.
A rested being have space and openness for joyful possibilities to flow through.
To allow new ‘maybes’.
Maybe the striving way we have tried all our life just isn’t working.
Maybe it’s the opposite of needing to ‘earn’ our happiness.
Maybe it’s the opposite of difficult. (“Gasp! It can be easy!?”)
Maybe the first ‘positive’ feeling to seed in our being is not happiness, but the state of not needing to control how or what is felt in the moment.
Whatever I feel is ok.. for now.
A softening to life.
A surrendering.
A breathing out.
Mundane.. But at ease.
With relief, space is created to welcome whatever may arrive, even the big H word.
