Happiness is not a waiting game?

Are you happy? It is a simple question and it should be a simple binary answer, yes or no, yet no one answers it that way, there is always a moment of consideration as you weigh up the positives and negatives that is a part of every life. There seems to be an implicit question hidden within the simple one, of whether you deserve to be happy considering your situation, has enough good things happen that you are allowed to be happy. However happiness does not come from the externals of life, it only comes from within, it is a choice and most of the time if you are not happy you are choosing to be unhappy, and there is a better choice.

Waiting for happiness is not a fun game, it is miserable, making happiness conditional on external events occurring means always being not happy until and if it happens, that is a long time to wait and is there ever one event that allows you to happy forever more. There is always another event that would make you even happier, and that means more waiting, and as you can not be happy until that happens, you end up in an endless loop of waiting and then deciding actually there is something better to wait for. That is an awful lot of waiting, so why not be happy now whilst waiting, why not enjoy it, the process of working towards goals, the moment that you having now, do not read to get an idea that will make you happy at some point in the future, be happy now, chose it, chose to enjoy the process of reading, let the words delight you as they roll around you mind, use your best accent, pretend it is David Attenborough speaking or whoever brings you joy, ask yourself, am I happy?

Then if you are not happy, take action, what is standing in the way, there might be jobs that need doing, so do them with joy or if you can not manage that, at least bring your full attention to the task, having presence is a stepping stone to happiness, as it brings you into the current moment rather than being lost in the past or future worries. Be impressed by your competence or your persistence in practise if you are not competent yet in what you are doing, there is even joy to be had in doing the washing up, you can enjoy the feeling of warm water on your hands, the efficiency of your system (glasses, cups, plates, cutlery, and then pans for me!), you can sing along to the radio, listen to the news, be simultaneously cooking and maximising the time in-between stirring your pot of good stuff.

You might need to change the focus of your mind, you could be lost in the weeds, the daily grind might be overwhelming you, in which case bring your mind to the bigger picture, what have you got to be grateful for, family, friends, health, wealth, skills, experience. During your life you have build up a whole storehouse of things to be thankful for, admire your collection, appreciate it, hold it close to you like a toddler with a teddy bear, you have gone through a lot to get it, make sure you remember it and every hard thing that you have overcome, you have had difficult days before, so benefit from them by honouring the strength that they have given you. Gratitude is the best antidote to unhappiness, it not possible to be grateful for the things you have and be unhappy about them at the same time.

It is only when you make happiness conditional that you can be unhappy, it is a choice and a difficult one not to make, our genetics push us in the opposite direction, it does not want us to be happy where we are, it is not a good survival strategy. It lets us be happy after a hard day's work when we have a full stomach and we are in a warm bed, it releases “Good boy” hormones like you are a pet dog, that is not happiness, that is dog treats, do not let your body seduce you, be aware of the process that is happening, enjoy the process but do not be fooled into thinking that is joy, it is a drug reward.

Joy only comes from our internal frame of reference, though we can use this reward system by deliberately doing hard things during the day, long walks, meditation, learning new skills, cold shower, these allows us to recalibrate our frame of reference, we do something that we do not like in comparison to eating cakes, so that we are happy when we stop and feel the warm glow of hard work, it is the comparison that makes us happy.

That is why it not possible to be happy all the time, when we are not getting happier, we feel that as boredom or restlessness, we have to keep on getting happier and if you are using external event to be happy that means winning bigger every time or you will be miserable. We see this with pay rises, a pay rise makes you happy but then you get use to it and then you want more, even if you got one every month, you would get accustomed to it and then you would want larger ones, there is no end to this hedonic treadmill, you only get to climb a steeper ladder. The same is true for any external event, in the end we have to return to our internal experience, how we see the world and act in it, the pursuit of happiness have no winners as you always had it inside you.

Attention and gratitude are the two prime weapons of war in creating joy in the midst of the realities of the world, nothing is permanent, everything changes which causes discomfort, there is emptiness in everything, and everything is interconnected, the good news is that there is no-self that actually suffers from all this, it just feels like it most of the time. It is by attention that you can notice both the real nature of reality and become aware that we carry joy within us at all moments, it is by noticing it's physical presence in our hearts, it is quiet and that it why it needs attention, which is easily distracted by problems that is why it needs you to set your intentions to bring your attention back to that joy, it is like noticing that you have a nose. Most of us don't, if some asks if we have a nose, we say yes, and if it disappeared we would not notice anything else, but in the ordinary course of a day, how many times are you aware of it.

That is one of the purposes of gratitude, it allows you to notice the small things, the everyday miracles that escape our normal notice, and life is made up of small moments, the cup of tea, a biscuit, a bird's song, the dawn, a walk to the shops, tired muscles, these are moments of joy, each one a treasure and they happen everyday. The are not big, grand events, they are not special, you have not earned them, they happen and you can either ignore them as you have more important things to do, or you can pay attention to them and it the practise of gratitude that allows to increase their importance in your mind, so that you do give them the awareness that they deserve. Life is the small stuff, a long series of small joys, that everyone has and perhaps that is why they are not valued as they should be, make the small moments of your life into the show, the reason to get up in the morning, that you love to return to like an old friend, pay attention.

The quest for purpose and meaning is exactly the reason that we lose sight of this gift, we seek to make ourselves special, when it is the reliability of small, ordinary joy that is so wonderful, it is always there waiting for you, you just have to make the choice in this moment to be happy because of this ever present joy. The choice is yours and it is between external happiness and inner joy, the first is occasional, and the second is always present, it does not mean that you forget about the big stuff, joy actually makes it easier to get on with the work that external happiness requires, it just means that you enjoy the process of this work, you pace yourself out, take time for gratitude and you practise being in control of your attention, you stop waiting for happiness and you enjoy the joy instead, that is the game that is worth playing.