I Want to be Happy

A big statement, that one, and one I’m sure most people aim for. As I have previously talked about, the pursuit of happiness is an oxymoron in such a way that as long as you are pursuing happiness, you can never really find it because it is necessarily kept at arm’s length. The same goes for the title of this blog post: I want to be happy – it is oxymoronic. While I want it, I am implying that I am not, and by saying that I am not, I am implying that I intend to be and am pursuing it.
To be fair, who doesn’t want to be happy? Let’s leave the semi-philosophical, semi-semantic debate behind us for a while, and consider what happy is and what what we intend to do with it. Indeed, reaching the state of “happy” must imply some kind of change. A change of situation, a change of mind, a change of heart. The question is, though, if the basic fundamentals of our characters change or if it is outward change that drives us forward toward the elusive goal that is happiness.

I got to thinking the other day, while reading over all of my post-hospital posts, about the nature of change and if we as a species are even capable of it. A sentence I’ve heard so many times is “You cannot change anyone apart from yourself” and I couldn’t help but wonder – is that really true? I believe it is.

I agree that an effort spent on trying to change someone else is an effort wasted. It is not only a waste of your time, it is a waste of theirs. If you cannot accept someone as they are, you should move along. Right? Well, I don’t think it’s that simple. Say you started a relationship with someone fairly young, and as the years pass, you develop different interests and points of view. You spend a lot of time in frustration trying to get the other person to see things your way or you sacrifice a lot of your time and personality to comply with their interests. And suddenly, it all becomes terribly maddening and all the effort doesn’t pay off, because no one is really happy while trying to be like someone else, or when trying to exist for someone else. But does that mean you give up the other person, just for being different? How does that fit in the middle of the age of tolerance that we pretend to find ourselves in (you know, the age of war on terrorism, religious fundamentalism and continuing racism and ignorance)? You do not simply cash in a person for being different from you, and you cannot, and should not, change for someone else. So, no, we don’t move along just like that, we look inward and focus on ourselves.

Peace, love and happiness

So, when does change happen? Does it happen?

I remember when I got out of hospital how optimistic and serene I was. I was thankful for life and appreciated everything so much more. Then what happened? I got into pretty much the same routine I was so familiar with. Overworking myself, not paying enough attention to my most basic needs, constantly trying to please others, yet needing desperately to have things go my way. In other words, I didn’t change one bit. Was that moment of euphoria post-hospital simply due to my brain having been deprived of carbohydrates – indeed, deprived of food – for too long and simply incapable of a proper, comprehensive thought? Or is my psychological make-up just simply set as it is and nothing will rock that boat?

Both explanations are likely, in my opinion. At the end of the day, I did not change, my situation changed, and I adapted. The survival mechanism needed to get through a month-long stint in a hospital was, in my case, a different look on life, a form of contentment that allowed me to survive. So that is a part of my psychological make-up – a fantastic capacity to adapt. Not change.

Due to the nature of my condition, I live a normal life while in remission. I therefore do not have the constant reminder of my illness that many other chronic patients have. Feeling normal physically leads to my feeling normal mentally (or, as normal as can be expected – I do experience bouts of frustration and “why me” syndrome every now and again), so, in principle, I haven’t changed at all. My outlook on life is the same, my goals the same, my ethics the same. The only thing that has changed is that I’m in remission now and have healed – I have new cells instead of the ruined ones. Otherwise, I am the same.

It is perhaps a depressing thought, that change is a rare occurrence. But perhaps it is the one constant we as humans need. After all, we are animals of habit and routine – one of the first things I learned as a new mother, for example, was the importance of a routine for an infant. But the fact that we can adapt to the most severe situations should be encouraging. Should we wake up tomorrow to another economic melt-down we can find serenity in the thought that we can – and will – adapt. Ironically, it is one of the constants of life.  But I doubt that we ever really fundamentally change.

Perhaps I should remind myself of that after ten years, and see if there’s any truth in this theory. I know my former therapist, for example, would disagree. For now, however, I am convinced that I am who I am and will continue to be, even though some thinking processes and opinions could potentially change. And there is certain comfort in that, after all.

I am who I am.

Standing out by being yourself

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