A few days ago, lying in bed for quite a while after waking up, it occurred to me for a brief moment that I was demotivated, that getting up and getting on with the day didn’t appeal. Then I realised that what I was feeling was somewhat opposite to that. I wasn’t demotivated at all. I was very motivated. I was motivated to stay right where I was, snuggled in bed, alone, aware of the sun slanting through the blinds, day-dreaming. I was indulging in a fantasy phone-call. Using my imagination to play out a scene that I’m pretty sure will never come to pass in my real world.
But only pretty sure. There’s no point indulging in a fantasy if you can’t believe in it just a little bit.
So, suspending disbelief, I smiled and went back to the imaginary conversation.
We should do more of this. Let the day-dreams come and enjoy them. We should also take note of what it is we day-dream about because these are the clues to what makes us happy. A lot of frustration in life is because we don’t work hard enough at being happy.
We work very hard at becoming rich or successful in our career or powerful or famous, but what if these turn out not to be the things that will make us happy. For some they will be. I don’t deny that the Trumps of this world long for money and power and fame, and I can only assume are made very happy by their attainment of it, although often appearance would suggest otherwise.
For most of us, though, these are not the things that feed our soul. We may need a measure of them in order to access the things that do nourish us – it is hard to be happy if you don’t know where you next meal is coming from. Not impossible as it happens, but hard enough for me not to want to give it a go.
For those of us lucky to have choices, which will include everyone who reads this, unless someone hated it and you just happened to find it wafting out of a rubbish bin – but even then, if you’re reading, you have time to read, the ability to read, curiosity, you have choices – for those of us who are so lucky, money, fame, power, glory are not the things that make us happy.
What does so varies from person to person. What brings joy to one will strike terror into the heart of another, raise a puzzled bafflement in a third and just a sigh of boredom in a fourth. That is one of the joys of humanity – our diversity of outlook and intellect and emotion and interests and abilities.
We may find our happy in exhilaration or pleasure or contentment or excitement or achievement or joy or calm or frivolity. We may express it in a shout or a giggle or a smile. If we’re lucky, it will be all of the above, but not all at once. Contentment and exhilaration are not natural bedfellows, but as neighbours they rub along just fine.
We may find our happy or we may create it or we may have it gifted to us. If we’re lucky, it will be a combination of all of those. I will pick wildflowers (my garden is full of them), grow roses, and buy lilies – I don’t need anyone to do that for me, but ah, the pleasure of the unexpected bouquet delivered to the door or handed to me ‘just because’ that never goes away.
We may discover happy in sport or art or being loved or the sheen on a birds wing or a cat’s purr or the view from a mountain top or the expending of effort to get there or in gardening or cooking or the giggle of a babe who has just learned what it is to laugh. We may find it in reading or learning or movie making or movie watching. We may find it in deep philosophical conversation or mardling over the garden fence.
It matters therefore that we listen to our inner selves and figure out where it is that we need to look for it. We won’t find it if we look in the wrong places.
I am made happy by the light on the water. When I wrote my list of “wants” in my darkest days, top of the list was always “the light on the water”. That’s a thought that needs more exploration, but in the meantime, it’s a go-to joy. If there is a river or a brook or a stream or an ocean or a sea or a lake or puddle in the street, I will find a way to see reflections, refractions, sunbeams being split apart to dance and play or coming together to make us look deeper at the world, or upside down, which it often is anyway. I love the reds and blues and whites of signage and adverts and clocks and electric lighting that undulate on the surface of my local indoor swimming pool. I love swimming clouds and impressionist trees in the river. I love the silver fish that skim the sea in late afternoon sun, that dance, that flash, that are not really there.
And when there are none of those things, I can look for raindrops on leaves, or a park fountain. Light and water, water and light. Life-giving both and the joys I will hold onto longest.
But there are other things too…
I find joy in sunshine and clear skies and the way the world smells fresh after summer rain.
I find pleasure in being held and loved.
I have zen moments when I take the time to cook, slowly and carefully and thoughtfully – committing myself to the making of a meal rather than throwing together something to eat. Somehow, it always tastes better as well.
I am content, deeply content, in my home.
I find calmness in walking. I need to walk. The rhythm of it quietens my monkey mind, my scattered brain finds focus in needing to find direction, and balance in needing not to slip and trip and weighing up when a satisfying mud-squelch becomes a boot-robbing bog best retreated from.
I am soul-washed by the wind and the waves. Connection beyond myself.
I am entranced by the stars on clear dark nights and romanced by moon-shadows on bright ones.
And this…this also gives me pleasure and satisfaction and a sense of my place in the world…this simple stringing together of words into sentences, thoughts, ideas, musings, murmurings. I love to write. There are those for whom it is a need, a drive, an ambition. I keep trying to subvert my writing down those roads, to make it useful, to make it successful, to hope someone finds it beautiful, but I keep failing because…because ultimately any one of those things is a bonus. The real pleasure, satisfaction, sometimes joy, sometimes adventure…well, it’s like going for a walk in this one respect: only on the bad days is the happy in the getting to the end of it. Mostly the happy is in the doing of it.
So next time you feel like snuggling back down under the covers, or leaning back in the grass, or on the sand, and closing your eyes to follow a fantasy…do it. It might just remind you of what you need to be doing with your life.
