There is a comic published by The Oatmeal some time ago, about how happiness is a fundamentally flawed concept, because it attempts to apply a permanence to an emotional state that is (as all emotional states are) transitory. One could feel bliss, or joy, or contentment, in a moment. Towards the end, the author discusses how they read, and run, and labor, because it is compelling and they find it rewarding, but it isn’t Happiness.
Before Erik and I met, I understand he very much identified with that comic. That the idea of “Happiness” insofar as a high level baseline contentment and satisfaction with life, was fundamentally an invalid concept. I think I disagreed with the comic. I don’t think I *was* happy at the time, but I believed it was an achievable state. Perhaps ironic, given my lifelong chronic severe depression.
Anyway, when Erik and I started dating, we felt, inarguably, HAPPY!! That’s that NRE. Giddy, excited, in love. Limerence. And now we’re coming up on our 5th wedding anniversary. We’re still crazy-in-love. We make each other laugh until we’re gasping. I’m still interested in what’s happening in his brain. I would say, we are still happy! (Aside from the chronic depression.)
And yet, I take The Oatmeal’s point. This weekend, Erik and I had a lot of labor planned to get the garden ready for the year. Erik was in the process of building compost bins, and we needed to clear the existing brush pile to have somewhere to put them. In the garden itself, I needed to clean out the dead plants, transplant some things, turn over the beds with a cultivator. And then Wednesday’s storm happened. Approximately half the branches on our 50+ year old pine tree broke. (This is a sincere tragedy, which I will write about later.) So we needed to do to clean up from the most recent snow-nado, instead.
Neither set of hard, physical labor was “joyful”. Garden prep at least felt future-focused! Getting hands dirty, getting ready for the year, seeing what was beginning to pop up in the perennial herb garden. But that was not the labor on deck.
Saturday, I moved the brush pile out of its current location. I had to move branches and dried plants, some with thorns. There were things that had once been paper bags full of leaves or grass mulch, but were now just kind of… hillocks of loose organic matter, which got heavier as you went down. And the whole thing was grown through with invasive vines — honeysuckle and virginia creeper. Years of growth that had grown around it all, knotting it into disorganized snarls. It sucked. I complained the whole time. I cried a little. It took hours of work to even see a difference in the space.
But eventually, I did see a difference. I had an area, probably about 8×12 feet, which i’d cleared and leveled. I had a pile of wood to break down, and a pile of dried plant matter to use in compost, and a pile of basically-already-composted material. Erik installed the compost bins. They are going to make the garden so much better! And they will help us utilize our waste more effectively. We’ve put kitchen scraps “in compost” for a while, but they didn’t really break down effectively, we didn’t use the compost, we’d just leave it to accumulate, and other problems. And yard waste just went on the brush pile. Now, it will be organized and contribute to the mission.
The Mission.
When I was moving out of the home I’d shared with my first husband, my brother advised me: “Treat it like packing for an expedition. Take only what serves the mission.” (Brendan worked a stint in the outdoors industry as a young adult, and learned many good things.) As I wrote in my journal at the time: I’m not taking it in a literal sense, exactly. I’m not taking a summer camp packing list’s worth of stuff, and leaving behind everything else. I’m just too much of a “stuff” person for that, howevermuch I work to downsize.
But nonetheless, he is still right: I am going on an expedition. Gwyn’s new life! What items serve that expedition?
Erik and I have continued to use that shorthand in our lives. “What serves the mission?” This can be in terms of whether to keep or purge something we own, how we spend money, or how we spend our time. If I had to articulate our Mission Statement, it’d be: “This life, with its little perfections, will endure.”
And this weekend’s labor served the mission. (Even if it sucked, and we are both scraped up and tired in our bodies.)
Years ago, I read the book “Emotional Agility”. The thesis of that book was remarkably simple when spelled out, yet still a good framework: Figure out what your core values are, and make choices aligned with those, and that will ensure long-term happiness satisfaction.
My therapist once said “The point of life is to love, and to work.” And that fits in there somewhere too. I love, and I work.
I’m holding all those threads in my hand — Live by my core values. Love and work. Serve the mission. Happiness vs satisfaction vs contentment vs joy vs bliss. And I think that’s as much as any of us can hope for. To be proud of our lives, and to push forward on continuing to maintain, improve, and deepen them.
My maternal grandmother (a wise woman) used to say “Happiness is wanting what you already have.” It is easy to hear that and think “bah, complacency!” But there is something to it. Match your dreams to your ambitions. Your dreams should be able to fit into your life. There is a continuum and a gradient between dreaming small enough to match one’s current life vs having the drive to grow one’s life to contain the dreams.
I’m happy in my life.
Because I’m happy in my life,
I’m happy in my labor.
Notebook 