"Our life is frittered away by detail...simplify, simplify." - Henry David Thoreau


I know I said "blog like no one is reading" but it's nice to know these people are

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Happy?

I've been reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and it has really got me thinking about being happy. Right now, in the depths of a frigid Canadian winter I'm having a tough time feeling anything but a longing for spring. My boys are all having issues of their own and my Other Half heads off on the boat show circuit soon for three weeks. The petty annoyances of life are all contriving to bog me down. The bickering amongst my boys, the never-ending snow piling up outside the door, never having enough time to do all the things I know I should be doing, let alone the things I want to do. When people make lists of the things that make them happy they are usually the little things much like the list I made when I first started this blog which is still there somewhere down at the bottom of the page on the right. There is nothing wrong in taking pleasure from the little things it's just that right now I need to think about the big picture. Rubin quotes William Butler Yeats who said, "Happiness, is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing."

This is the problem for me at this point, smack dab in the middle of my life - I am not growing while everyone around me is. My sons are growing literally and will in a very short time all be taller than me but they are also growing in so many other ways. In their maturity and independence and as people. My Other Half and my sister are both growing businesses, shooting for the big leagues, creating what they hope will be their legacy. Friends around me are growing as athletes, pushing themselves physically and some are growing emotionally, leaving a relationship or a career after many years. As for me, I am the ultimate in stasus. I have been in the same relationship for over 25 years, I haven't had a career change since before the boys were born. I haven't trained to run a marathon or even entered the Club Championships. And after starting this blog two and a half years ago I haven't really done much with it. I haven't started writing the great Canadian novel or had anything published in the local paper. So all the little things that do make me happy aren't adding up to much and I am finding myself on autopilot. Telling myself that I am doing the best I can raising my kids and being a supportive wife. I make lists and I have even crossed a few things off them but I think Rubin is right, what I need now is growth because before I know it my children will be grown and S. and I will be empty nesters and I don't want us to wake up one morning and say, "Now what do we do with the rest of our lives?"

6 comments:

  1. Good Morning- I know I am somewhat older then you,but I have had some of the very same feelings.My family would say "Mom's in a funk"? Really struggled on "My Purpose" etc. I did change my career-and it put my family in a tailspin! It's all worked out-luckily.
    You will be surprised someday something will land in your lap when your not looking!
    ps-spring is around the corner.

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  2. Just spreading the word about Redbox's free movie code: BEMINE. Happy Valentines!

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  3. Well you are GROWING your blog readership!
    It's hard to not have a goal, it troubles me, too, when my world feels stagnant. But then, we're not really conditioned to appreciate the small the very ordinary things that happen every day. I hope you find something to grow towards, as small or as big as you need.

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  4. I disagree with your view that you feel like you are not growing. Every day teaches you something by way of life, society, your sons, your husband, your family and so on. The mind absorbs all of these things and you will find one day you will wake up and wonder how you go to that place of wisdom and insight and peace with yourself in all you do. Trust. Do not question, growth is happening. But if you feel you need to "do more," then by all means yes, but never criticize yourself for not doing so. You are a mother, wife, homemaker, daughter....you are many things to many people and in these relationships you are growing love. Just believe. ((hug))

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  5. I've been reading the Happiness Project for a while - I keep picking it back up, and then putting it down. I don't know why, but it's not doing the' happy" too much for me. Maybe too harried to be happy all the time - but trying to be content.

    Everything that you do that does make you happy DOES add up. I think it's very common for women our age to wonder about their life, where it's going, what our goals are. I question it myself a lot, even as I made a major shift in lifestyle/career - after feeling stagnant for a few years myself. I can't say that when I have the time to think about it, that my goals are any more defined than they were before.
    I'm rambling... Friday wine/whine.
    Glad to check in again :).

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  6. Good morning.

    I have always felt strange that people need to be taught in order to be happy. And I don't trust easily those who teach happiness. Behind this curtain stands sometimes other bad means.

    What I can see around me, is that some people can be naturally happy, without any sort of teaching, in any sort of circumstances, and social conditions. While others cannot be happy, whatever they do, wherever they are, whoever they are, how much money they have.

    And Happiness Project will not help those who cannot be happy or those who don't want to.

    I don't know if happiness is growing or not growing. But it is quite true that it is not pleasure or virtue.

    Am I happy ? I can say ; yes. But I don't need to live a hundred years to fell the happiness. I don't need to be this and that, I don't need to have this and than, I just need to be here for one moment, just alive. So, yes happiness is happening now.

    I may not see tomorrow but I am seeing today, and today is my happiness, even if I am forced to be what I don't want to be, even if I am doing thing I don't want to do. If it is the case, I hope that I can die freely in mind and happy.

    Thank you for your articles. I am starting to follow your blog today.

    Rougemer. 20110328

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