Happiness is a Choice?

Yesterday took place primarily inside my head, perhaps every day takes place primarily in my head, perhaps everybody’s day takes place primarily in their heads. I still have not decided where this entry is going but those thoughts are what yesterday was about; at least until the Met game started. I have my priorities.

It was a beautiful day, yet I had trouble getting myself outside. I had just given up on going out when I pulled myself together. My psychiatrist said that when I don’t want to go out is the most important time to do it. So, I did, my first thought was to take my power walk circuit of the reservoir. I walked a block in that direction and changed my mind. What I really needed was communing with nature, so I turned around and walked to the Bronx River Forest. Isn’t that a great name for a spot in New York City. It’s not a big park, you are never far from civilization but in it’s bounds it’s wild. This is not a well-manicured urban park, it’s a piece of wilderness with dryad loveliness. It is in a flood plain, there’s a reason it’s named for the Bronx river, and there were temporary ponds on both sides of the paved walk. I thought that would preclude me going on my favorite dirt path along the river and when I looked upstream, I saw the path blocked by water. Then I looked downstream, and it looked clear, so I braved it. I had never walked this way so that was a bonus. I did finally reach an impasse and had to backtrack, but I spent time alone with my thoughts, trees, and running water, exactly what I needed.

At that point I was exactly opposite the New York Botanical Gardens from home. I looked for a way to cut across and found what looked like a secret gate in the middle of the forest next to the river. There was a guard there. I found out that as a Bronx resident I am always free to walk the gardens. I didn’t know that! I’m going to start doing that regularly. Unfortunately, I got there as the gardens were closing so I couldn’t take the shortcut. Thanks to that my walk was extended to 5.3 miles. That’s much better than the zero that was tempting me.

That might not sound like a day spent inside my head but that’s exactly what it was. The key words in “I spent time alone with my thoughts, trees, and running water” is “my thoughts.” It’s no revelation that being out in nature is good for the psyche, people have been saying that as long as people have lived in civilization.

Where did my thoughts go? I thought about my thoughts. Second thoughts as Terry Pratchett dubbed them. Some third thoughts are going to find their way into this entry, perhaps even some fourth. Therapy and medications have made a big difference in my life. I was thinking back to how depression used to hijack my mind and cause me to do things that made my situation worse. I alienated people I love out of fear that they felt alienated from me. It’s tough to realize that how much of things I blamed on others were at least partially, sometimes mainly, my fault. This is not to say that the other person was faultless, they are humans just as I am, and had their own issues, but I have no control over that. I do have control over what I do, even if it isn’t complete.

The embarkation point of these thoughts was my decision to go out and do something to make myself happier. I decided to be happy; there had been so many times in the past that decided to pick at my emotional scabs. At this point my thoughts and planning this entry became the same thing. I organized my thoughts to present to others rather that keep them private. That’s proved a great way to keep my thoughts honest. I can hear the objections of my imagined readers. I was contemplated titling this, Happiness is a Choice. The problem with that is the problem with all philosophies you can fit on a bumper sticker, it’s such an oversimplification that it becomes counterproductive. I heard the voices saying, “That’s blaming the victim! Making people feel guilty about feeing bad.” If I left it as just an aphorism that would be true. While I chose to be happy, and there are many situations where we can choose to be happy, but there are others that are so bad that being unhappy is irrational. The problem is that it’s hard to figure out if you are in that situation from inside your head. There were so many times that I thought my life was unbearable that in retrospect I see wasn’t.

“Choose to be happy” should never be an admonishment. It’s never the fault of the unhappy person. The idea of “choose to be happy” is to let people know that there are things they can do to make themselves happier and to choose them. If that little thought in your head is telling you that you don’t deserve to be happy, it’s lying.” If the little thought in your head is telling you that everything is hopeless, there’s a good chance that it’s wrong, run with that chance. When my depression was the worst, I felt that being happy was to deny the gravity of the problems I faced. I was choosing the feeling that I was right over my own happiness. That was a poor decision but one that many people make. I am not alone in this. You are not alone in this. That’s my reason for writing this. You can’t choose to be happy, but you can choose to try and be happy. That’s not a betrayal of yourself, your ideals, or of other people. If you are happy, you’ll make those around you happier, that makes it mitzvah.

When you are feeling so bad that you don’t want to feel good is the most important time to be proactive. Take that walk in nature, listen to that Met game, listen to the music you love, watch your favorite TV show, call a friend, do whatever it is that makes you happy. It’s not magic. This is not the power of positive thinking or any other bumper sticker philosophy. It’s just doing things that may help. The more things you do the more likely they are to work.

OK, so that’s the way this went. Another possibility was talking about those second, third, and fourth thoughts. I went with the spoonful of sugar, not the medicine. That’s fine.

Now I should once again take a walk in the beautiful weather, but I think that will wait. I just realized how quiet it is, I should take advantage of that and do something else that gives me joy, record Gord’s Gold.