How many of you have said, looking at the current state of your life, “I wish I could get back to how happy I was 10/20/30 years ago?” Maybe you long for the good old days of your marriage, before things went south. Maybe you long for the days when you actually enjoyed your job, before you became jaded. But I think the truth is that you really DON’T wish to return to those days, because there is a deeper happiness in store for you around the corner. Let me explain.
Once upon a time, I was a bouncy, exuberant college student. I had a group of friends I enjoyed, a major I was great at, and plunged myself head-first in communities such as Society for Women Engineers. I skipped around the globe studying abroad in France, volunteering in Thailand and interning in Colorado and Tennessee. I did all of this with the sort of wide-eyed bliss of someone trying out his or her wings for the first time. It was easy to be happy because everything was going so well. Can you relate?
Then I went on to graduate school and I entered Phase 2. The bouncy stopped. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a bioengineer, but had no idea what my life’s passion was. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to be friends with, who I wanted to marry or what I wanted to get involved in. I felt stuck, unsure, indecisive and lost. It was hard for me to be happy because of all the turmoil I felt.
I thought back to my gleeful days in college and wished I were back there. After all, I was so happy. What went wrong? What would it take to bring back the bouncy?
Then I realized that I actually wouldn’t want to bring back that form of happiness. My happiness in college was due to circumstance. Consider how it is easy to eat well when you are hanging out at organic vegan summer camp, but then you go home and out comes the box of brownies. It was easy for me to be happy in college because I was somewhat naive about who I really was and everything was working out so well, but that wasn’t lasting happiness. My happiness was circumstantial because when I went to grad school and circumstances changed, I was no longer happy. That is not the sort of happiness you want to hang your hat on.
Enter Phase 3: cultivated happiness. Cultivated happiness comes from having learned how to build your own happiness, regardless of what is going on around you. It comes from knowing yourself and taking on the challenges that you are passionate about and being proud of the path you are on, no matter what bumps it may have. Cultivated happiness is lasting happiness and is a skill you can bring to any situation. For me, cultivated happiness came when I realized that I, and I alone, was in charge of making sure I had a good time each day and that I really did have the power to enjoy my life no matter what.
Dr. Samantha Sutton
The Daily Love
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