I read a quote today on Twitter - Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh. That’s quite appropriate, cause one of the things I’ve been thinking about as I write Freedom to Be is the whole idea of happiness.
I think it’s fair to say that everyone wants to be happy. Where a lot of our conflict lies (both internally and externally) is in our choices of what we think will make us happy (something to remember as a writer). For example, if you as a person think owning lots of pretty things will make you happy, you’ll probably find a time when you’ve got all the pretty things you want and yet you’re still not happy, and be conflicted. If, as country, you think owning that bit of land over there will make you happy and go over to take it from the country that already owns it, well Good Morning Conflict.
I’m going to put forward a hypothesis about happiness, and I’m interested in your thoughts. The hypothesis is this – happiness is not a destination, or an aim. Happiness is a choice.
I’m sure you all know people who have had, or do now have horrendous lives – dealing with illness, or abuse, or poverty, or discrimination. Yet these people are generally, on the whole, happy. And I’m sure you know people who have pretty good lives – they’ve got a roof over their heads, they know where their next meal is coming from, they don’t deal with daily threats to their lives or abuse – yet they are the most miserable sods to ever walk the earth.
For me, looking at them, it seems that happiness comes down to attitude, and attitude is a choice. You can choose how you feel about a situation, what you do about it. Even if you think you have no choice, can’t act, you can by choosing how you feel about it.
And that’s an empowering thing to know. We can all get caught in places in our lives where we can’t get immediately away from the thing that is disturbing or saddening us and that lack of control over our destiny or what happens to us can be depressing. But the thing no one can control is what you think of something and how you feel about it. So by choosing to be happy, even if your life is going to shit, you can regain a certain amount of control until the chance for escape comes.
And it’s amazing how thinking happy can be catching. Try this – laugh. Go on, just laugh, right now. Ha ha ha, hee hee hee. Feels fake, I know, but you know what – I bet you’re also feeling kinda lighter, happier. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the complexities of life that we forget that we’re basic biology, and we can trigger reactions within our body.
For some more thoughts on happiness, check out this video from TED - http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness.html