Dear Kymmenen,
I don't know how it happenend, but by chance I landed on your blog the other day. It happens to me very rarely, but reading your entries I couldn't help nodding my head in agreement. I have been trying to start my own blog for years, but somehow I always end up reading what others write instead.
Since you put the idea of reader-response into your blog, I will make use of it now to put a question to you which I usually ask everyone I meet:
What does happiness mean for you?
I am curious to learn what people (and you, of course) think makes life worth for them.
Keep going, Kymmenen, I would like to read more of your stuff.
Take care,
Olga
Well, dear Olga,
For many reasons, I'm glad you wrote your email. Quite many co-incidences involved.
I see you waste no time in chit chats. An incredibly wise man like myself offers to answer questions (what do you think of the movie "Avatar", or, what do you think of Northern Lights?), and you elbow your way through the crowd, look him into the eye and shoot it straight and true.
Damn. Happiness?
You got me there, for I'm still trying to figure that one out.
All I can say about happiness is that, progressively, my perception of what happiness could be has changed significantly. Perhaps, I used to regard happiness more as a state, or the result of certain conditions coming together, and thus, I spent a good time looking for and trying to figure out that state or those conditions that could be it.
Later, I think that with the arrival of my two kids, as with so many other things, also the whole issue of happiness changed dramatically. I suspect it has to do with stopping being so self-centered and managing to put my head out of my own ass in order to put it in someone else's ass.
The possibility of sounding corny scares me, but it must be said that although I do feel that the whole having kids business is full of manipulations, expectations, blackmailing, evil traps, pre-conceptions, marketing and, well, loads and loads of crap (also literally), the experience of having newborn people into the world, right into your own hands, IS quite something.
The other day, Veronika and me were in bed together while the kids (instead of strangling each other as it is the usual thing) were frolicking at our feet. We were discussing plans, future and happiness.
Would things be better if we moved there? Would our situation improve if I got that job or the other? Wouldn't it be nice to live there, with those people, arranging things that way or the other?
Then, I noticed it.
It must be the age. I had been doing that before. I have moved to a different different-country, I have got that nicer nice-job before, I have found true true-love with yet another person, and still, the question, the longing, remained there, untouched.
So, I turned to Veronika and said suddenly, "You know? I think that if we are ever going to be happy, it should happen now. The kids are healthy and so we are, we have no money constrains, we got food, roof and warmth. I don't think things can be any substantially better than this; on the essential side, things can (and certainly will, for that's life) go only worse.
If there is happiness outside of the TV commercials, it is happening right here and now, in front of our very own eyes, so let's enjoy it while it last regardless of everything else."
Dear Olga, I think happiness is what happens to us continuously while we are alive. We don't notice it because we have learnt to associate it with pretty photoshopped faces, livid colours and lively tunes. But I think happiness rather is a lack of tensions, the hard task of feeling at ease with the world, ourselves and its ugly miseries.
Its volatile nature probably makes it unavoidably come and go. But that's good, I think -that's a good way to keep us going hoping to bump into her at the next turn of the corner.
Its comes and goes, perhaps work in a similar way as the Winter-Summer cycle here in the Artic region: we apparently do need to take in a lot of shit before we stop bitching and realize that Summer only last a few weeks, that it is great, and that if one is to enjoy it, gotta be now or never.
The answer might be then, not so much what happiness is, but rather, if we will be able to ever recognize and enjoy it before we find ourselves in our death bed, diluting our remains through slow breathing, wondering where the hell our life's gone to.
Thanks for reading this week's answer!
And remember, every Sunday a new question will be answered and thus YOU can send yours, and as many as you want, to:
dearkymmenen (at) yahoo.com
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