What Good is Happiness Anyway?

Happiness.    The state of being happy.  So what the hell does that even mean?  

Happy.    Feeling or showing pleasure or contentment...  Nope.

                Having a sense of confidence in or satisfaction...  Nope

                Satisfied with the quality or standard of...  Nope

Maybe I am just stuck in a midlife crisis or pandemical depression, but I have lost sight of anything that I really enjoy.  I don't know what makes me happy anymore.  Even the things that I used to enjoy have lost all their excitement.  Things I used to love, doing things with my family, children, concerts, vacations, hiking, biking, carpentry, yard work, automotive repair, tv shows, movies, football games, soccer games, video games, and even music, have become mundane and disappointing.  I never have enough time to do all the stuff and things. 

Everything seems to revolve around bills and debt.  I just go to work and make money to pay bills, to buy more things, get more in debt, so I have to work more to pay more bills.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  There is no real enjoyment in it anymore.  There is no goal I am trying to achieve.  Nothing to look forward to.  No pot full of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Capitalism.  It is another form of control by it's very nature.  Consumerism.  Being raised in a society that is fixated by constantly upgrading everything to bigger and better, means you will never truly be satisfied.  If you get caught in that loop.  I am serial # 17595623. I am a paycheck.  A cog in the GDP production machine.

I look back now and see everything differently.  I had to be institutionalized to mold me, and make good grades, so I could go to college and get good grades.  That was the promise made to my generation.  A college degree will equal a good job and a good job will equal a good income and a good income will equal a good family life and THAT my friends, will equal happiness. Right up until we hit the real world and were smacked in the face with the reality of that lie.  I was told I needed to do many extracurricular activities.  Not because I liked any of them, but because it would look good on my resume.  The things I really enjoyed, like soccer and skateboarding, were constantly pushed away from me because there was no "future" in it.  Meaning income.  

But I digress... I just feel stuck.  Like... I have made my own cage and I can't get out of it.  I guess I have went into a survival mode.  There is just enough of whatever it is to keep me going.  No light at the end of the tunnel.  Just another, longer tunnel.  And I stand tall and carry everyone I can along with me.  But, the older I get, the heavier it feels.  The more I hurt.  Emotionally and physically.  Maybe it's just my stubborn nature.  I don't know what giving up is, but there has to be more to life than survival... If there isn't, then what's the point?

This will pass.  I am down.  So down right now.  Maybe I am just having trouble coping with yet another wave of Covid infections and lockdowns coming on.  Maybe I am just about to have a breakdown from being everyone else's emotional support.  2021 is almost over.  These last two years of pandemic have been heavy.  People ask what it is like and all I can think is heavy.  Everything in life has become more complicated, farther away, and more expensive.  I stand tall and try to carry everyone along.  Constantly searching for that spark I lost.

  

Question Love

Sometimes, I question love.  I wonder how it is possible to love multiple people all in different ways.  I guess I should be more specific.  To love and truly care about more than one woman for the different qualities they possess.

Growing up in a military family I moved quite a bit.  So there are little bits and pieces of my heart spread out across the country.  Relationships that were ended due to the next set of orders my father received.  Some with no closure whatsoever.  Sometimes it feels like a gaping hole there in my heart.  The lifelong question of what if?  To be compounded a million times over when finding out they may still have those exact feelings too, even decades after the fact.  There was never a "Ah Ha, she is the one for me" moment.

Meeting so many people can be really educational.  You learn so much about yourself, your wants and needs. You also learn about them, their wants and needs.  All the different qualities that make us who we are.  No two people are ever the same.  In fact, no one person is the same as the were before.  To quote Alice “I knew who I was this morning, but I've changed a few times since then.”  I often think people come and go throughout our lives when we need them, not necessarily when we want them.  And I think we are all in a constant state of flux.

Here in seems to lie the issue to me.  Can any one partner really fill all our wants and needs?  I have never met "the one" in my 47 years.  I know I am lacking in many ways as well.  I really don't believe they exist.  I fell like that is more of a societal construct.  You have to choose one, get married, procreate and pay taxes for the continued good of our society.  You get some aspects of what makes you happy, as do they.  All while both missing out on other things you desire.  We have opportunity cost drilled into our heads in economics.  For every decision you make you have to give up something else, right.  So in America, loving a woman means you have to marry her in a very traditional sense and are no longer allowed to be close to any other women. 

 

I see so many married people trying to make it work.  There are all the fairy tales we grew up with telling us that we are all special and will meet "the one that completes us."  Then we can live happily ever after.  When a man loves a woman they get married and spend the rest of their lives together.  Shouldn't that really be when a person loves another person anyway?  A universal love, not one dictated by race, geography, sexual orientation, etc.

Couples go about their routines every day.  Things can be great, things can be terrible.  They go through emotional pain together.  Sometimes it brings them closer, sometimes it pushes them apart. Sometimes they fight and then they make up, or just pretend to.  Very few of them seem to have the same wants, needs, or goals.  But they continue on.  We are constantly told that marriage is a work in progress.  You can never stop trying.  I have to ask, if it is supposed to be, then how come it it so hard to do?

I know some people rely on the bible to explain love and marriage, but that is just a whole different can of worms to open.  Especially when it comes to different religions.  Also being a true believer or not changes that game as well.

 

Maybe it's just me.  Maybe I am just confused.  The more I think the more I confuse myself.  Maybe I am just selfish.  Maybe I am from another broken family and have spent my whole life searching for something I never had or saw in my childhood.  I don't know.  I do know my heart is broken in pieces and scattered around.  Some were picked up and held onto tightly.  Some were put in a box and locked away.  Some were swept up and dumped into the trash.  Some are just hiding because they are not allowed to come out and play.

I often wonder if people in open marriages, or multiple partner marriages have it all figured out.  But society says that is wrong as well.  So it is what it is....