On opting out of trying to be 'happier'

and trying my best to tease apart the unique and varied experience of actual joy

Trying to be happier all of the time is exhausting. Mostly because I say I want more joy or whatever, but then I also do a ton of weird shit to avoid actually receiving it. I’m sure this isn’t unique to me, but a lot of the time I think I should be significantly happier than I actually feel. You know, like I have a lot of really good things happening in my life that should make a person feel the equivalent amount of really good inside. But honestly, there’s a demanding aesthetic tied to that level of happy; a texture that itches. And so far I have avoided participating for reasons I’ve yet to fully nail down. I hope to tease some of it apart here, I have a feeling you’ll probably relate to the chaos of it. What it comes down to is that I can’t tell if the things in life that we’re told should make a person exuberantly happy don’t actually land for me…if the pressure to be happy the “right way” is robbing me of being happy in “my way”...or if happiness just isn’t the right adjective for what I’m feeling most of the time. So here goes.

The romanticization of seemingly ordinary simplicities as an easy access point to greater happiness, when those simplicities are neither ordinary nor easily accessed, make me feel like a failure at the most basic level.

Recently my Substack has become inundated with lists of folks doing winter differently (or, more accurately, writing poetically about the idea of doing winter differently…I’m still not convinced any of them are actually living the lists they curated, but we’ll get into that later). Anyways, I appreciate the gesture, I really do. I can always use a gentle reminder of really lovely bright spots that contrast the dampness that is winter on the west coast of Canada - a kind of wet cold that gets its fingers under your skin and squeezes your bones. My struggle with these offerings isn’t in the offering itself, it’s what is being omitted, and the effect that has on all of us.

There was one article in particular that was offered in such a way that I actually believed for a moment that I could absolutely curate my life to mirror her pinterest board version of what a less sad numbed out winter season could look like. She invited me to explore the season through the five senses (revolutionary, I know), offering up suggestions for each. Topping her list were things like orchestral music, the ballet, cloved oranges, tea brewed from tiny hand-dried rosebuds, potato gratin and roast chicken, broth (just generally, I guess?), classic manicures, hand cream, 100% wool garments and stillness…confession…incense…forgiveness. She paired her article with idyllic images of beautiful women bundled, cultured, and apparently in total bliss within themselves. I imagined how quiet their minds must be. How dreamlike it would be to stand where they were standing, to feel insulated from the world.

But alas, I didn’t have the right tea, and I didn’t own 100% wool anything. I didn’t have season tickets to the ballet, any of the Bronte novels or the funds to stock my fridge with bone broth (I’m fairly certain she wasn’t suggesting we sip on tetra pack chicken stock, so…). And before I could catch myself, there I was, googling thrift stores that sold wool things, with rosebud tea in my amazon shopping cart, picking through the remaining seats for a local ballet the following week (I hate the ballet, but sure) and Mozart playing in the background. Good lord.

The way capitalism jumps in and ruins everything will never stop being absolutely wild to me. One minute I was reading a really lovely (questionable) piece inviting me to think about how I might invite more joy into an otherwise grey season…and the next I’m readying myself to spend hundreds of dollars to make some version of that life a reality. But the lives we try to curate never measure up to the one we orchestrate in our minds. So it really wouldn’t have mattered how many of the things off that list I checked off. Because at the end of the day, extracting joy from any moment requires one thing that most of us try to bypass - that this article failed to mention in even the briefest sense - the requirement of massive discomfort that comes from slowing down, being still, feeling bored and staying with.

What they’re pitching isn’t happiness…it’s an identity; an idea of what it might feel like to be the kind of person who floats through seasonal sadness unscathed and fully moisturized. So, when I was able to take a minute and step back, what I realized was that I was already incorporating similar elements into my days, and I imagine you probably already have your version of these things too. Like…I try to light a candle each morning when I eat breakfast because it feels nice - even if I gulp my food down and blow it out 5 minutes later. I opt for Jazz in the evening while I cook dinner because my system is usually already buzzing from the day and more words feel hard. I try to find some sort of fresh herb to incorporate into my food each week if they’re not 37483234 dollars or wilted af, and I squeeze a lot of fresh lemon on my meals. I stretch a bit in the morning if I remember to. And I’m slowly making my way through a novel that asks very little of me. I have a few different teas in my cupboard - nothing as pretentious as handpicked rosebuds, but flavors I enjoy and that’s good enough.

The thing is, most of what makes me happiest is the most easily missed and most quickly forgotten. When these things become a part of the routine, I move through them mechanically and I often forget that some version of exhale is available there. It doesn’t just happen from lighting a candle. It’s born from the moment I take to notice it there, waiting, and the way it makes me feel when I do. You don’t need to buy anything to curate a more poetic existence. Light a candle. Notice it. Blow it out and move on.

Uninhibited joy that spills over the edges of life is rare. And is also the expectation.

Like a lot of you, I’m sure, the binary of happy and sad was internalized early on, where the presence of one meant the inherent absence of the other. Where one side was expected and the other was a problem. I learned how to hide big emotions away in my little body, either pretending I was doing better than I actually was, or pushing aside euphoric excitement to seem ‘cooler’ than I felt. Now, as a mid-thirty-something, I’m still working on shifting this. On figuring out why I still play it cool when something happens that makes sparks explode inside of me. Or why I abandon myself and my needs when I know others will not be okay if I let them show. Unfortunately, what I’ve come to recognize, is that I cannot just push down and away perpetually without pressure building. Which means that eventually (once every 3 months or so seems to be my current rhythm) I find myself incoherently crying to my partner, unable to attach logic or reason to why I am very clearly not “fine”.

As far as I can gather, I think our internalization of the emotional binary is to blame in a big way. This idea that there is a right way to be happy (elation, joy, uncontainable bliss…you know, trad happy), and a right to be sad (hidden from sight and does not affect anyone or anything else, especially productivity) tells us that maybe its just safer to exist emotionally withdrawn somewhere in the middle. Because while this is all very accurate, we are also told that too much joy, the kind that overflows, makes us too much and makes others feel too bad about themselves. So we’re supposed to aim to “have it all” but also, don’t fucking brag about it when you do.

And so, I’m starting to question the goal of striving for trad happy altogether. It seems to me that joy overflowing has become this ideal experience that we have somehow come to believe is our birthright, so long as we follow the script handed to us and give the performance of a lifetime. Our current social landscape is rife with images, products, programs, books and podcasts soaked in this particular flavor of happiness, encouraging us to make ourselves a priority and claim what we deserve (for a price, of course).

In truth, though, our bodies, our nervous systems, are simply not built to perpetually exist inside of an emotional onslaught of joy like we’re being told is the “have-it-all” dream. And in order to make us want this shiny ideal (and be willing to pay up for it), it has to make our current life feel really mundane, boring, and meaningless. It has to erase every other iteration of joy that exists so our only option is to give in to the chase for something brighter. When really, our capacity to exist in countless different expressions of happiness and sadness - at the same time or independently from one another - is much more profound and life-giving than one exhaustive ideal. And what’s more, the way you define your own expression of joy, what it feels like, and how it moves through you to be witnessed by the rest of the world, is not only entirely unique to you, but is also changing constantly.

So here’s where I’ve landed with it. I’m no longer interested in reaching for the singular version of joy that renounces all others as less than. I’d like to practice being with joy more often, by opening to contentment just as fiercely as I would reach for bliss. I’d like to start re-narrating my relationship to all versions that previously fell short or never even registered. And I’d like to stop downplaying the version I’m in when someone asks me “what’s wrong” because my face must not be emoting in the way they want, and I go hunting for all the reasons why.

But more importantly, I’d like to try to be present enough in my life to actually know when I’m holding even the most subtle fleck of joy in my palms. This will ask me to expand my joy-literacy a lot…not just conceptually through language, but also somatically and sensationally. Like, what does it actually feel like in my body to be “tickled” by something? Or content…what does the joy of contentment taste like? Is there joy in rage? I think there is. Or in the moments of release after a really, really good cry…I imagine it feels like soft cotton and smells like grass after it rains. I also think there’s joy hiding out somewhere in a box of kraft dinner. Where does joy live inside of comfort? Inside of exhaustion? I think the difference between being curious, delighted and enraptured would be a really lovely thing to understand in my body. Oh, and wonder. I know I want to experience more wonder and awe, just by noticing more of the things I take for granted. Like lighting that damn candle at breakfast.

Happiness comes backlit with suffering. And we need the capacity to hold both, but exist perpetually in neither.

The intensity of sensation that exists on both ends of this spectrum is not meant to be sustained indefinitely. We think joy to be this thing that fills us without end. But it actually takes something from us to feel it fully. It’s taxing on our system, and can tip us over into flooded states pretty easily. There’s a reason why many of us (I’m calling myself out with this one) consciously and unconsciously close off from joy. Oftentimes we simply do not have the inner resources to be able to experience the intensity of it and come back down on the other side without our systems overheating.

For example, I can remember many times in my life where I found myself in a moment that felt nearly perfect with my partner, only to pick a fight with him over something so ridiculous it’s like I floated out of my body and watched myself ruin the moment. Or times where I’ve been alone somewhere, maybe meandering by the ocean or reading peacefully on the sofa, when my brain switches suddenly and I’m flooded with anxiety about what I need to do or how much time I’m wasting. Maybe you can call up a few of your own similar moments where, like me, you tumbled over the edge into the well worn grooves of your emotional comfort zone and robbed yourself of the joy available. It’s hard - really, really hard - to let goodness in and fully receive it. It’s big work to stretch that capacity, and it requires a lot of patience and compassion when our systems tell us it’s too much by reacting in defense.

The other piece of this to hold close is that the intensity of joy we are capable of knowing is equal and opposite to the intensity of suffering we are willing to endure. Our capacity for sensation expands in both directions, so opening ourselves to more of the “good” stuff automatically makes us more vulnerable to the harder stuff. We have to be ready to honor the humanness in that without thinking we fucked up or we’re doing it wrong when we have days that feel worse than they did before…because we’re also going to have days that feel way better than they did before. And that’s just part of it.

In the end, I really believe that joy and suffering work together harmoniously. That even when suffering is present, there too is joy - a certain small amount meant to help us endure the pain of whatever moment we find ourselves in, but joy all the same. Maybe its access point is the weight of the arms that hold you, even if those arms are your own. Or perhaps it’s found in the permission you give yourself to not have to try to make yourself feel better, a compassionate offering to be as you are and to know that that’s enough.

And likewise, when we are in our fully embodied joy, however that looks and in whatever form, suffering is its constant companion - waiting for the moment to fade away behind us. And so we shuffle along this continuum, back and forth forever. Never meant to stand still in any one spot, but rather finding the end and pushing it out just a little bit more each time before turning and starting again. I think that’s the human experience, finding where we end and the unknown begins, and dipping our toe over the edge to know we can survive it.

It’s about knowing when to stop reaching.

A few years ago, Landon and I were living down in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. We met a local fellow, his name was Lev, who offered to take us to some of the least known but most stunning cenotes in the area. If you don’t know already, a cenote is a natural sinkhole that forms when limestone bedrock collapses and exposes the groundwater underneath. There are something like 6000 cenotes in the Yucatan, many of them connecting together underground. Lev told us they were sacred to the ancient Maya, who viewed them as portals to the underworld (so, so cool).

When we arrived at the first cenote I was blown away by the vast root systems from the trees above breaking through the limestone and stretching to drink from the pools far below. Lev turned to me and pointed to where the surface of the water just barely made contact with the tip of the roots. He explained how the trees reach and reach and reach for years to find the water, but once they find it, they stop. They don’t try for more and more and more, they know exactly what they need, and that is all they take.

an uninhibited moment of joy in the cenote

When I think of happiness, I think of these trees. I think of the kind of joy that leaves you breathless, and how that is such a rare and special thing; something I hope I get to experience again in my lifetime. Something I hope everyone gets to experience at least once. But I think about how that moment is a blip, it isn’t the pool that nourishes us. These trees are content with just enough to experience their life. And I wonder what would happen if I stopped expecting more than enough happiness in mine. I wonder how much more rich my day to day might feel if I knew how to give myself enough joy to be satiated, to recognize what enough feels and looks like, to honor and cherish and really be with myself in that way. Instead of bypassing what’s already here in search of the thing the world is telling me I should want, I wonder what the texture of happiness becomes without the expectation of bliss constantly embedded within it.