I was walking down my street the other day, there was no one around and it was very quiet. The wind felt fresh yet gentle on my face, it didn’t have the same piercing cold attached to it that we’ve been so used to lately. There was a stillness in the air as though all the houses I was passing were still asleep and it was the middle of the night, though it wasn’t. Taking my time being in no particular hurry I swung my bag slightly to and fro and listened to the sound it made as it brushed against my boot while I walked. Just then out of nowhere I suddenly felt really happy. It was so acute as if a button had been pushed inside me to activate it. I felt a wave of warmth and absolute certainty spread over my entire body like a thin sheet wrapping itself around me. It was as though I could almost hold my whole life in my hands right there and then and look at it with a clarity you only get sometimes when you wake up in the morning and realise your dream was a dream. The kind of clarity where reality doesn't get any sharper. The feeling was beyond happiness, it was sensational. And for those few seconds I can honestly say I didn’t have a single worry in the world.
Before I could think about where this had all come from, the feeling had already vanished only to be replaced by something even more acute, panic. Actually panic is putting it mildly, it was more like dread. A sort of unjustified dread that didn't have a leg to stand on, after all I was only walking to the bus stop, yet it felt more palpable than the happiness which had preceded it. And then I knew that it was the very happiness I had just experienced which had brought on this darker feeling, a feeling bordering on terror that was now running through my body like little currents of electricity shocking me one step after another. The feeling being of course the fear of something going wrong when everything is going right.
When things in our life are going well, exceptionally well, why do we then expect it to all go wrong? In fact we’re so sure that things will go wrong we’ve even created disclaimers to soften the blow, so things like ‘it’s too good to be true’, ‘I don’t want to jinx it’, ‘touch wood’ and the worst of all beliefs that we don’t deserve it and therefore of course it won’t last. When did being happy get so complicated? Seems as though it should come with its own warning label; too much of this may cause prolonged anxiety... If only it were just an expectation of things going wrong but it appears to be much more intrusive than that, more like an unshakeable feeling of something always being around the corner, something bad that is coming our way to ruin all that is good. The fear of this happening is so great that we’ll do anything to camouflage our happiness; we’ll downplay it, dismiss it, keep it under wraps and generally not give ourselves permission to really enjoy it because enjoying it is the quickest way to wreck it.
Trying to work out how we’ve reached this point is way past the scope of this little blog but having said that I can’t help but think that if we were to alter our thinking a little bit here and there though it may not necessarily change our fate it may however help reduce the worry of tempting it all the time.
So how do we view happiness and sadness? Are they at opposite ends of the spectrum? Is it a bit like a game of two halves where there can be only one winner? Or does the presence of one automatically mean the absence of the other? I was thinking just now of a friend of mine who loves ice cream. For dessert she always chooses three scoops, each a different flavour and as they begin to melt in the bowl beside each other, their colours start to run and the flavours mix together. They no longer belong to their distinct labelled tubs, they have become something else. I wonder if happiness and sadness aren’t that dissimilar whereby most of the time they run into each other, are mixed up and co-exist. It’s not that surprising to find a lot of humour at funerals and a lot of sadness at weddings, loss and gain are two sides of the same coin. Life presents them to us together, we are the ones that have split them apart, and by doing so we short change our happiness and solidify our sadness.
‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands (clap, clap) if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands (clap, clap), if you’re happy and you know it and you really want to show it if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands (clap, clap).
Children hold all the wisdom! As we were taught in primary school if you’re happy bask in it, clap those hands, eat lots of ice cream and rest assured that you can’t tempt fate as I think it's fair to say that fate in whatever way we choose to understand it is by its very definition inevitable and therefore incorruptible. Happiness on the other hand is much more within our control, tempted?
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