I think we’re going about happiness all wrong. We often don’t know how to be happy or even what it means. We have been told our entire lives that we need to find happiness along the way, but do we? I don’t think so, In fact, I am pretty darn sure that we as a people or even as a species aren’t very good at happiness. We’re good at lots of other things. We’re great at creating, destroying, acquiring, propagating, franchising, consuming, fighting and sometimes making peace but we’re not that great at being happy.
Sometimes we try to get there through accumulation. “When I have six zeroes in my bank account, then I will have really made it and I will be happy!” This is seen as being a productive and an ambitious member of society, and I’m not knocking it believe me. I think all of us should be as prosperous as we want to be; but as a strategy to find happiness it’s not very effective.
Have you ever lost huge chunks of your life to the idea that you will be “happier” once you achieved something? Have you ever tried really hard to get a degree, or a certain job, or climb some mountain (either literally or figuratively) and then gotten there. We usually feel good for about a day and then wake up the next morning and everything seems pretty much the same. What a ripoff! We tend to spend huge chunks of my life trying desperately to improve some condition or circumstance so we’ll feel happier. I hate to say it but most of the time it doesn’t work. We might just need to rethink this whole thing.
I think many of us are sleepwalking through our lives and waiting to get to this distant fantasy land that miraculously contains “lots of money, tons of time and someone to do our laundry, oh and a big screen TV” in order to be happy.
Doing this stuff hasn’t worked for me and I’m guessing it hasn’t for you either. Well, let’s learn how to do this thing called happiness. We’re going to explore it here. I am actually cooking up a book called Doing Happiness and I’d love to share some of my research and thoughts with you. All of the research I have done leads me to believe that being happier is attainable by doing really simple accessible things. Let’s do this.
Oh My God I was pissed off. The lady on the bike was looking at me with something close to hate and I’m sure I didn’t look much better. We were staring each other down at a stoplight, I won’t repeat the conversation but you can be sure we weren’t wishing each other a happy birthday. This was very definitely not a good experience. The sky was starting to spit rain at us on our morning commute and my opponent and I were both determined not to back down. This felt weird and more than a bit wrong. We were both cyclists. I consider cyclists to be friends I haven’t met yet, but clearly we two were not getting along. I tried desperately to maintain some sense of scale. This was no big deal. It was clear that I should just let it go but I was finding that very challenging. News had come through the talking wires that a family member had passed away and I was desperately trying to hold my shit together.
My inner Gandhi (if he exists) was searching for insults. Her inner Buddha (if he existed) looked like he was getting ready for a cage match. We yelled at each other. I absolutely did not want to be reasonable. The strange thing was, I’m sure we are both kind and reasonably evolved people. If we met at a party we would have witty and insightful things to say to each other. Not now. Now, we were just two educated, reasonable people who might as well have been kicking each other in the school yard.
Eventually the light changed and I used a whole lot of that anger to speed me along to work. The experience bugged me for days. Was it completely unnecessary? Was it actually a healthy burst of anger in a barely civilized world?
Beats me, but I think this stuff has to come out in some way shape or form. We have to make room for this. Maybe letting off bits of steam can prevent a major blow up. I am reminded of our journey with cancer and recovery in that , no matter how hard we try to keep it together, sometimes we can totally lose it and be remarkably unreasonable and “not like ourselves”. I am so not proud of this moment but did my psyche need it? Probably. Was it the best way to go about it? Nope. Maybe we can remind ourselves to let this bad stuff out in ways that stays safe for us and those around us. Recovery is a tricky thing and as much as we try not to have things bother us, they do. It’s OK to be pissed off, sad, angry…whatever. It’s also very OK to find a place to put it that won’t hurt you or someone else. That way we can get to work safely and there will probably be less yelling in the streets. What are some of your coping mechanisms that don’t involve swearing at commuters?
You’re going to have to kick some ass on this one Rob.”
Whoa! I was more than a little surprised at hearing this especially from a doctor. I mean, I wasn’t in an exercise boot camp or at a motivational lecture. I was in a psychiatrist’s office. I had been diagnosed with probable thyroid cancer a week before and had been referred to this doctor as part of my treatment plan. I went just because I was supposed to. I mean really – a psychiatrist? Come on! I had expected to talk about my feelings and maybe told that it all went back to my being bullied in grade 3. Instead, the doctor looked at me evenly and gave me marching orders.
“This is going to be tough. It’s a serious thing you’re about to do and it’s going to take everything you’ve got.”
I almost laughed out of nervousness. Really? It wasn’t that serious, was it? Well, it turned out the good doctor was right. At the time I was a bit pissed off that he was so frank with me, but now I completely get it. We have to kick ass pretty much at every stage of recovery.
In the days and months that followed I appreciated that I had been told so frankly how serious cancer is. A journey with cancer, any journey with cancer, can take all our focus, determination, love, understanding and humour. Even to this day, when faced with making an adjustment to my life because of this disease my doctor’s words come back to me. “You’re going to have to kick some ass.” It turns out that ass kicking is a skill that comes in handy when we are in the thick of this journey and when something unexpected comes up as a survivor.
Here’s to all of us kicking ass and supporting each other while we do it.
We as human beings can pretty much get used to anything. It’s quite remarkable really. The day a plane crashes in your backyard, you might be pretty freaked out about it, but in a week or so it might feel like a normal part of life to have the Transportation Safety Board sifting through the wreckage while you sip a cappuccino on your porch. A friend might walk by and say “Oh my Gosh! Look at the plane crash in your yard!” you might reply “Oh ya that, but have you seen my new cappuccino maker?”
Many times this is what happens with a cancer diagnosis. Initially it can feel completely earth shattering, but in time we do adjust to it; and to some degree we get on with our daily life.
We might find that in a week or two the initial shock wears off and we start to accept our circumstances. This might seem odd to people, but as the old saying goes “life goes on…” The trivial and mundane can actually be a real advantage at this point. It can really give us a boost to start caring about things that seem really normal. Walking the dog can be a marvelous distraction from a life threatening disease. Having to go buy Cheese Ranch Doritos for an “Orange is the New Black” Marathon can actually really help you get your mind off the all-consuming worry of a new diagnosis. Any way you can get your focus off of your troubles can be a huge help. So, can life go on after a cancer diagnosis? Absolutely, and the small things we do every day like walking the dog and even buying Doritos can serve us by showing that moment by moment, hour by hour, we can get through this.
We meet a lot of experts when we are sick. We might get diagnosed by a physician or a group of physicians, then a specialist or two. After that, you may have been helped by nurses, or specialists who take your blood, maybe a pharmacist. Further down the road, you might get the help of a surgeon or a radiation oncologist. We need all of these experts. They are highly trained in their specific jobs and that is remarkably valuable to us.
However, sometimes meeting all of these people who have a bunch of diplomas on their walls can leave us feeling like we are “less than”. Remember that from school? The “less than” sign or the “greater than” sign? Well, sometimes meeting all these folks can make us feel like we have less to offer or that we as patients aren’t as important as those who help us. This is really unfortunate.
You see, every patient is an expert. I mean this in a very real and direct way. We are all experts in our condition. We are experts in how it feels to get a life altering diagnosis. We might be experts on what it’s like to tell family members that our lives have just turned on a dime. We are experts on how to wake up in the morning and get on with our day when the concerns of the rest of the world seem remarkably trivial. We might be experts on helping a friend through a tough time, or having empathy when someone is going through a similar experience.
All of these things have value in our lives as well as the lives of others. They don’t give out a PHD in Courage or a Masters in Empathy, but they should. Here’s to your expertise; both the recognized and the unrecognized; the seen and the unseen. You are an expert. You rock.
