Some of you can likely stop reading in a couple sentences; this may not resonate with or interest you. But, for me, with my insufferable monkey-brain permanently stuck on overdrive coupled with my insatiable need to learn everything before I die, such questions are irresistible. How can I measure “X” but really indirectly measure “Y”? And, especially if “Y” is sort of a loaded nebulous type of thing.
Maybe for others, evaluating happiness is not that difficult, or maybe not that interesting. For some it could even be a forbidden luxury to consider or rather in conflict with their identity or in opposition to their coping mechanisms. Seems like it may be a little bit of many of those for me.
But as I circle around the drain of presence the question seems to answer itself. Can’t I just evaluate how present I am? Can I be anything other than content or happy or fulfilled if I am truly present? When I am really present, I am not in the future nor the past. I am not in anxiety nor depression; those are the rulers of those two other non-present realms. Isn’t present another name for happiness? How about compassionate? Can we be happy if we are not compassionate? Can we really be our true self if we allow suffering to go unchecked around us? Are you not my left elbow and my neighbor my spleen? Maybe that is what the Rapture is, or Nirvana, or the mythical Iowa. A blissful universal Satori swallowing us all up in one collective “a-ha”.
Somehow, I am happier now than I was when I began writing this. I am moving more in presence. The walk and the bath and the candles and Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead all helped. The action-packed day of exploration, though fun, somehow was taking me away from presence. It did not seem that way as it was transpiring, yet that was where it seemed to take me.
What else could I measure as a proxy for happiness? Would evaluating confidence or the ease of naming five good friends reliably suffice as a test? Did I pick five because that is how many fingers I have? What if only four come to mind? If ten come rushing out, am I twice as happy as if five came to mind? If five hundred, would that be the same as zero? Can I count myself? Can I also count me and I?
Is happiness a good thing to even concern ourselves with? Joyful, content, care-free, what else would be a better stretch goal? Life is about change after all. We are never anything, after all, we only exist in relation to other things, which only exist in relation to still others. Would another easy proxy be how effortlessly we are able to just be, to not fidget, to not speak, to “be” not “do”.
Alternatively, act as if you are happy, even if you are positive that you are not. Fake it ‘till you make it…act “as-if” and likely you will distract yourself long enough to realize that you were happy all along. Can we really be anything other than happy if we have air in our lungs and a beating heart?
