I am not happy.

I am not happy. I try to be but I’ve always failed. I was never happy and never will be. As Old Scrooge might have put it, “Happiness?! Bah! Humbug!”

Nah, I’m not going to jump off a building. It’s just that after a few years of trying to understand more about happiness, I’ve realised there’s something not quite right with the sentence: I am happy. Now, compare this to the sentence: I am feeling happy…right now, anyway (I wasn’t feeling so happy last Sat night when Man U lost to Chelsea. #$!XXff!@!!)

See the difference? I think it’s important to be careful with our daily speech, so as to create frequent reminders to ourselves about the nature of feelings. Feelings are by design meant to be temporary and fleeting. They are not meant to last forever. Suffering comes when we try to cling to a particular episode of happiness, or cling to a particular situation that brought us a feeling of happiness -  it really is as futile as trying to catch a cloud.

Now the feeling of happiness is an individual experience, so what makes us feel happy can differ a lot from person to person. I personally like to lift heavy things, but most people just think I’m mad.

[Here's one guy who likes to lift heavy things, heh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5groVHlMkRE]

If you haven’t felt happy in a long while though, it may be time to sit down and reassess your life goals and whether or not your current path will lead to those goals. Or maybe it’s time to support another football club other than Portsmouth or Burnley.

There are some situations, however, that are common in bringing happiness to the average person: A job promotion or pay rise, an overseas holiday, celebrating a birthday or winning the grand prize in a Toto draw.

But how often do these situations occur for most people?

Strike Toto – once in a lifetime (well, more likely once in several lifetimes…as a human, since  I don’t think there are Toto draws in the deva, animal or hell realms.)

A job promotion or pay rise – a promotion once every 3 years, plus a small pay rise every year

An overseas holiday – once a year

images by photoeverywhere.co.uk

Celebrating a birthday – a few times a year (your birthday and the birthdays of those you care about)

So there’s a problem here, if you find that your happiness depends on these infrequent things. It means you’re only going to feel happy at most a few days a year, which does suck a big deal.

The challenge then is to find things in daily life that can help us feel happy. It would be great to have a little dose of happiness each day, don’t you think? Just to keep a smile on our face as we go about our daily life until one of those supposed bigger doses of happiness come along. It’s not easy – to do so requires you to open your eyes, to appreciate and be grateful, so you can prise these small joys from their hiding places in the nooks and crannies of the daily humdrum of our life.

Since I’m writing this post at home, I think that’s a great place to start looking, since it’s somewhere most of us have to return to at the end of each day.

Here’s what I can think of right now:

1. My own room, where I can do almost anything I want
2. Hot coffee (I don’t have to pay cafe prices)
3. I can wear the most run-down clothes I have, and no one will care
4. Hot shower
5. Mum’s cooking
6. Cable TV
7. I can take a nap anywhere
8. Internet access

Now, how about coming up with your own list?