….and what do we do about that?
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes me happy. Things like a proper home of my own, a desk that doesn’t make my shoulder hurt when I sit down to write, nature right outside my door and other things like that. There are so many reasons to grow and improve myself, I feel. On the other hand, the one thing that I love more than anything – writing – is somewhat of a challenge.
It’s nothing like writer’s block. Not at all. I get the opposite, in fact. Sometimes, there too much in my head for me to be able to write it down. It often happens if I skip writing a few days, because my head starts to overflow with things and I feel a strong need to write it down if I don’t want my head to break. I try to write a little every day to avoid this, because when I feel like that, it makes it so hard to sit down to write. I often end up writing because not writing is too painful and not out of a desire to do so.
If I sit down every day to write, it doesn’t even matter how long, then I get a little space and empty my head so that I can function optimally. I feel stronger, happier and less tired when I write regularly.
So, why is it that I can go days without writing knowing full well that I will feel worse, get fatigued and slowly fall further into a depression the longer I go without writing?
Of course, there is no logical reason for why writing affects me the way it does, and I have no satisfying reason for going without writing. I have the time, because if we love something or someone, we can always make the time.
It’s that simple. We prioritise.
Or that is what I used to believe. Lately, thinking about what I want in my life and what I don’t want – you know – figuring out what really matters, I’ve repeatedly had this odd thought.
What if not doing something can become a habit, just like doing something can?
I know, someone out there is probably rolling their eyes at me, saying ‘Duh…’, but to me it was rather an unexpected realisation. I always thought habits, and indeed bad habits too, were things you did. Like always apologising, or biting your nails, or maybe something else like that. I didn’t really think a habit could be something you didn’t do.
But consider it for a moment.
Maybe that bad habit you have is something you have gotten so used to not doing, that doing it feels like an extravagant gesture. Maybe you love to walk by the river when you walk home from work because it’s beautiful and makes you relaxed, but because the city route is 15 min faster you get used to just taking that route home every day and soon walking by the river is almost incredibly far out of your way. Even though it’s really not. Why not spend 15 min doing something you love every day? If it makes you happier and give you more energy at home to spend with the people you love, then 15 min is really not a long time, is it? In this case, has not doing something not become the habit, just like it became the habit to take the quick, less tranquil route home?
I know some people would say it’s the same difference to them, that it doesn’t matter if it’s taking the quick route home or not taking the comfortable route home that becomes the habit, but to me it makes a huge difference.
Consider, for example, that this habit of choosing something that doesn’t make you happy because it’s simpler or faster is the habit. That would mean it was the focus of our subconscious behaviour. When faced with more choices we would tend to choose the thing that didn’t make us happy as opposed to the choice which would make us happy – without really considering how unhappy the other choice might make us. The focus would be removed from the choices in themselves and intensely focussed on simply, by habit, making what ever choice took us furthest from happiness.
I think I’ve done exactly that. It became a habit. A bad habit.
I made my choices without really considering the options and simply choosing whatever didn’t make me happiest.
It started as a kind of defence mechanism, I think.
When I was younger, I was in a really bad place. Sometimes I wonder how I am alive today, because I sure didn’t make an effort to be. I was in so much pain, especially when I went off my meds and started self-medicating with alcohol and cigarettes, that even the smallest chance of happiness was unbearable to me.
The idea of happiness I understood, but I couldn’t relate to the feeling and I was too afraid of it to pursue it. I remembered what happiness was, but I didn’t want to feel it. If I felt even a little happy, I was sure I could not bear it and live another day. I wasn’t sad, though.
I was numb.
Numb like I can’t describe it, like I was a void and anyone close enough would get sucked in and die like me. I was never a fan of zombie movies or games and sometimes I can’t help but be amused by how much I can see myself in those creatures on the screen. Brainless and desperately stumbling along until the moment someone comes along and bashes my head in – only, no one ever came along and bashed my head in. I wanted someone to, but no one ever did.
I couldn’t handle happiness because I knew I wouldn’t survive it. I wanted to die, yes, but I couldn’t take my own life because I didn’t want my mother to be left alone. I felt indebted to her, but at the time, I didn’t feel much of anything, so it’s a miracle I felt that at all.
Now, when you feel nothing the only thing that can make you feel anything at all – make you feel like you are alive – is feeling. It’s funny, isn’t it? Feeling alive is just as simply as it sounds – you feel it.
The only available strong emotions when you remove happiness is pain. When you turn your back on the light you can only ever face the dark. That is the nature of the duality of our world. So, the only thing I could do was walk into the dark…. and I did.
Always choosing the thing I knew would make me the least happy was a sure way to force myself into painful situations that would make me hurt so bad I could still remember I was alive.
It sounds silly, now that I think about it. At the time, however, I did not feel like I had a choice – in a way it was survival for me.
Things change, though. Times change. We change.
I changed too.
One day, I didn’t want to die. One day I stopped thinking about how I could kill myself without harming or traumatising anyone else in the process. One day I even felt a little happy. Then, one day, I realised I wanted to live.
Not survive, but live.
My life didn’t change in the ways I had expected, but it did change. The more I changed, the more frustrated I became when I couldn’t push my life in the direction I desired. It was a mystery to me.
Why was it that I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do, the things that made me happiest?
Writing is my core, I’ve said that. I want to write, I love to write, and yet, I kept finding excuses not to write. My desk is not a real desk, but an odd simile of one. No matter how I adjust my chair, the height is always wrong and because of the shoulder injury I have I start to get aches and pains every time I sit down to write. This is just one reason to not do what I love – it causes me physical pain. I always seem to be able to focus on all the things that makes it impossible instead of focusing on what makes it possible.
You could argue that this is the real reason for my struggle against happiness – my focus is wrong. In a way you would be right. It’s just not what you think.
Every choice I make is based on which one is most likely to make me less happy than the other option.
It’s become a habit, and even when my situation changed, when I changed, my bad habit stayed with me. Even though I want to make the choices that make me happy, it is so ingrained in me that making different choices is like a punishment. This understanding of my choices makes it easier for me to change, however.
Now that I know I make choices that make me the least happy, I can see the pattern more clearly. It also means that I can respect and understand why I started making those decisions in the first place. Before I would blame myself for always making choices that made me feel hurt or sad, I would hear a long line of negative self-talk about how I always mess things up and then try to correct it with positive versions. It helps with some things, not all. You see, I do mess up a lot and sometimes that’s the core of my issues. My mistake was thinking all my issues stem from the same source – they don’t.
In this case, the matter of making choices that make me happy or not, it’s about something different. I am not messing up; I am very successful at making myself feel not happy.’
To me, that makes a really big difference.
What I have to do now is start falling at making myself unhappy and start being happy. It becomes a choice I can make, not a failure.
Okay, okay. You might be thinking this is a little too optimistic and you’d be right. I’ve not been saved, far from it. I have just started saving myself and honestly, I do realise that it might be a long journey – this time I am willing to take it though. I want to find my way to happiness and that means making different choices even when those choices come at a cost – the cost of changing a habit. Changing a habit, we all know, can be really difficult. But a habit is only really a habit when it’s subconscious. Once we become aware of our habits, we can make it a choice. We have to make it a choice. That’s how we change habits we don’t want or need anymore – by choice. We have to actively make the choice to change it as many times as it takes until the opposite becomes our new habit and we end up doing it subconsciously.
One day I’ll make my choices depending on what makes me happiest, I know it. I just don’t know when.
