“Tell me what or who makes you happy?”

This from a talented mid-twenties blogger/writer/poet is one of the sadder posts I have read in some time. “Luna” is now in therapy. Nothing, she writes, makes her happy:

…It’s so unsettling to realize that nothing sparks happiness in me anymore. To add insult to injury, I couldn’t name the last time when I felt genuine joy about something or someone and that’s extremely unsettling because in the last few years I met my boyfriend, I found a career I like, got promoted, I accomplished a lot but it’s like all of it is meaningless because I didn’t feel anything.
My life has been a flat line, without a heartbeat curve for so long that I failed to notice it until I was confronted with the question “Tell me what or who makes you happy?”…

Identifying what makes us happy seems pretty universal among us. In our own ways, we are all seeking happiness in life. A major problem (and she seems to have it) is we may not even know what even actually makes us happy.

That is no surprise, really. I think many of us feel much the same – although we are not made to confront it by a therapist so probably do not much consider the question as she had to: “Tell me what or who makes you happy?”

[Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels.com.]

I am no professional on this subject. Chances are I am much like you. I am here merely thinking out loud.

Considering her post, I thought about my occupation/obsession. The nature of authoring is such that there is always something negative you could choose to fixate on. So it takes conscious effort to remain positive and NOT to allow yourself to become unhappy… for if you allow yourself to become unhappy in something as central in your life as creatively writing for publication, you are likely to find that it harms your overall outlook on other aspects of your life.

My own life thus far has taught me that existence is good and bad episodes all piling on usually about simultaneously. Day in and day out there are experiences that cause us to smile mingling among unpleasant happenings. Meaning you may get that new job you badly wanted and you are ecstatic, but then you receive a call only a few hours later in which you learn your friend has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. So keeping a level head is necessary.

There is much to be said for stepping back when we believe we feel unhappy, or if we feel nothing is truly making us happy, and deliberately embracing the cliché of “counting our blessings.”

It is no secret the world can be a harsh place. Personally perhaps we are currently also not exactly where we wish we were (or had years ago imagined by “this birthday” that we would be) in life as well. But consciously aiming our thoughts away from negatives and reflecting instead with gratitude upon what we do have in life, may lead us to a better place in our head.

And if we make that effort at “gratitude” a serious mental exercise and habit… we may find a happiness (at least of sorts) emerges from such reflections.