So after searching “blog post prompts,” Pinterest gave me a bunch of suggestions. And the one that kept sticking in my head was the simple question, “What makes you happy?”
Maybe it’s because I’ve had a tenuous relationship with happiness over the past year or so. I mean, all of us have a kind of tenuous relationship with happiness all of the time, but a year ago, if you had asked me, “Are you happy?” I wouldn’t have been able to say “yes” with much confidence. I had happy moments. But the general over-arching sense I had about life wasn’t happiness.
I knew time just had to pass for some of the happiness to return. But there are things, both small and big things, that make me happy. So I’ll spend this blog entry telling you about them.
Summer makes me happy. I love stepping out onto the pavement at nine o’clock at night, and feeling the heat underneath my bare feet, and watching the sun set and seeing the first few stars come out. I like seeing Jupiter and Venus and the moon, and the Big Dipper almost exactly overhead. I love popsicles and fresh fruit, and campfires, and parks.
Babies make me happy. With their stupid cute little hands and sneezes and laughter and cuddles. And the way they slowly learn to walk and talk and surprise you with how much they’re learning.
Hell, learning makes me happy. I think I might get a sort of extra big dopamine burst when I learn something new. It’s a high I’ll keep chasing for the rest of my life.
Theatre makes me happy. Dear goddess above, theatre makes me happy. It’s this beautiful combination of so many things I love. Literature. Acting. Sound and music. Lights and painting. Community. Design. A live connection between the creators of the art and the audience. And somehow it all combines to become something greater than the sum of its parts. (Wondrous mathematics.)
Patrick makes me happy. The way his blue eyes look at me, the way he makes me laugh, the way we can talk about anything. The way he shares my love of learning new things and the way we geek out about outer space and the human brain together. I love how almost every time I walk up the stairs to his apartment, I can hear him singing along to something playing on his laptop. The kindness and patience and honesty with which he lives his life makes me happy.
The incredible television that’s being made nowadays makes me happy. Handmaid’s Tale. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Love. Orange is the New Black. High Maintenance. Stories that are funny and beautiful and thought-provoking, that break with the traditions of the past, that put women and people of color and people of all shapes and sizes and levels of attraction at the center of their own stories. (There’s an entire episode of Easy about a teenage girl and her relationship with her parents’ Christianity, and the role was played by a big* actress, and NOT ONCE was her weight a plot point. Not in her relationship with her parents, not in her relationship with her boyfriend, not in her relationship with herself. Because while those stories are interesting and good to tell, it’s not the only story that fat people have to tell.)
Then there are little, deeply satisfying things that bring me happiness. Writing with a Uni-ball Jet Stream medium-point pen. Cross stitching. Organizing things—getting rid of things that aren’t needed anymore and finding places for what’s left. Food. Sleep. Kissing.
I know there are a million ways to measure happiness. To define happiness. I guess I’m just aware of the fact that the happy moments seem to outnumber the unhappy ones nowadays. There are still a lot of question marks about my life, and plenty of stresses, and plenty of sad moments. But I just feel happy lately. I’m grateful.
* I never quite know how to talk about weight. I’m all about fat acceptance, because I don’t think our society’s prejudice against fatness actually has much to do with health. (Going into detail would be a whole ‘nother blog post.) But here’s the reality. I’ve always been fairly skinny/average (through very little action on my part). So I don’t always know which terms are best. Overweight? Fat? Big? I want to de-stigmatize these words, but I also want to be sensitive to other people’s experiences, which are not always mine. Anyway. Feel free to hit me up in the DMs if you have insight.
