(Some thoughts on happiness)
These are strange days we’re living in, and the general consensus is that everything’s going to shit – to put it philosophically. And, if you’re anything like me, you’re looking around and seeing a world that you don’t quite recognise, a world that makes increasingly less sense. Most of our countries are in crisis. Certain fundamental things that we’d come to rely on – the safety nets of our “civilised” societies – are coming apart, and it now seems that anything can happen, and it can happen to us. “They won’t do it,” I said about Brexit, but they did. “They won’t do it,” I said about Trump, but they did. The paradigms are shifting and the safety nets are full of holes: anything can happen. And where does that leave us?
It leaves exactly where we’ve always been: responsible for our own sanity, our own attitudes, our own happiness. In charge of who we want to be in this world, and what we choose to put into it. There’s enough misery around; enough fear, despair and negativity. We are inundated with it, daily, on the news, on the social media, on the streets. And forgive me if I’m wrong, forgive me if I’m insensitive or naive, but I just cannot see how adding more negativity to the mix, how perpetuating it will make the situation any better. When we can choose, instead, to be as happy as possible despite it, when we can be aware of the shit that’s going down but still find happiness and positivity where they can be found. Because they can be found. It really is a choice that we make, for ourselves and those around us. Because happiness is cumulative and it spreads. And that’s a small way to make this crazy world a slightly better place. Where anything can happen.
So when everything around me is falling apart, when people are crying and dying and blaming each other and living in constant fear of darker tomorrows and I post photos of sunsets and horizons and mountaintops and talk about happiness, I’m not showing off; I’m not being insensitive or oblivious. I’m trying to remind myself and anyone who sees my posts that happiness still exists in these things. That peace can be found, even if momentarily. I’m scared too, but then I look at the place where the mountains meet the sky and for a moment everything is OK. And those moments add up, and they become an antidote to the fear and the despair – if we let them. So I’ll keep looking at mountains for as long as there are mountains to look at, and I’ll keep talking about happiness for as long as I still have a voice. Because yes, I know everything’s going to shit, but fuck you, I’ll be happy anyway. How about you?
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