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I admit, the title was click bait. Unabashedly, pure and simple, 100% click bait. It’s click bait not because the answer is perfectly obvious to you, it’s click bait because everyone wants to be happy. Everyone wants to believe that if they don’t have the secret to happiness, that they need to look for it just in case they stumble across it, even in the errant web page of an unknown, angry, bald author.
Our life is better because we made a decision to change it from what it was, and maybe we are a little worse off financially than we were in our previous home (Stoneboro, PA) but, we are happy.
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As of right now, my bank account has $63.12 in it, and I’m spending $4 on coffee creamer because my daughter doesn’t like it when I’m cranky. My car died on the side of a major highway (thus necessitating a 20-mile walk back to where I was staying, and in Florida, this sucks. I’m slightly behind on my bills and my current job is a slavish quagmire, devoid of any kind of recognition for my work while at the same time giving my work/pay ratio whiplash when they pass each other going in opposite directions at the speed of light. I have a persistent cough that just simply won’t go away, my daughter is at the beginning of the defiant stage in her life (which will be there until she passes away in 100 years), and my above-mentioned house is essentially in one of Tampa’s less affluent areas, which means that my daughter gets sung to bed by sirens of one species or another once every two days. Then, I lost my job. I got a new (and even better one) that will be the beginning of something amazing.
Despite everything, I have just written. In spite of the facts laid down here, I’d like to relate one more detail about my life.
A few weeks ago, I got around after work and went to the nearby laundromat to wash our clothes and pick up a few things. I took my wife and daughter with me so they could get out of the house for a bit and enjoy the sunshine, something they rarely do in my hectic 60-plus-hour work week.
We put the laundry in the washing machine, and I let my daughter “help” by putting the coins in and hitting the buttons. We end up leaving our basket and detergent on top of the machine and make our way out of the building to head towards the grocery store so we could grab a sandwich or two. All of a sudden, I stopped. I looked around, took in the sun and thought about my wife, daughter and the plans we’d made that night with Ken and Jen, amazing friends of ours.
For us, happiness is not what your bank account reads, it’s the connections you make in this world.
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I couldn’t help but smile. Even within the rushed few hours I spent washing our clothes and catering to my daughter, amidst everything we had to do before we headed over there, and everything we had to deal with regarding our money, and house, and car and job and all the bulls**t we had to deal with on a daily basis …
… I felt so supremely happy.
None of that mattered. It STILL doesn’t. Our life is better because we made a decision to change it from what it was, and maybe we are a little worse off financially than we were in our previous home (Stoneboro, PA) but, we are happy. We live in a place that to us is just so beautiful it breaks our heart. We have each other. We have a couple of amazing friends and amazing family.
For us, happiness is not what your bank account reads, it’s the connections you make in this world. It’s the coffee your drink in conversation with a friend, it’s the smell of a flower sitting on the kitchen table. It’s the scent of a hot meal. It’s the feeling of the windows down, the sunroof open, music blaring in the cab of your four-wheel drive Jeep driving across the Courtney Campbell Causeway on a sunny Florida afternoon.
So, I suppose THAT’S the worm on the end of the click-bait hook. Everyone’s “happy” is different.
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It’s the contented sigh of a sleeping daughter. It’s the moaning of a lover. It’s the clicking of your mind when you “get it,” whether “it” is a revelation of what life means to you, or learning some new piece of knowledge that gets you to the next level. It’s the breeze at 3:00 a.m. sitting on your porch when you can’t sleep, and it’s being in the arms of your wife when you can. It’s my wife, it’s my daughter, it’s my mother. It’s existing where I want to exist, HOW I want to exist.
But, then again, this is what life means to ME. Last time I saw my mother, visiting her in our ancestral house in southern New Jersey (while we were on our way to Florida,) she said something to me that changed my life. It was kind of interesting because intrinsically, I knew that this was true, but I was never able to put it into words because the words simply wouldn’t occur to me. She told me that “everyone in this world needs to find their “happy.” My mother is a very religious person, and while normally her advice is filtered through that lens, and thus grates on my nerves (Sorry, Mom. I love you, but it’s true,) this piece of advice was exactly what I needed to hear.
So, I suppose THAT’S the worm on the end of the click-bait hook. Everyone’s “happy” is different.
• For some, it’s the thrill of deer-hunting season. For others, it’s swinging and non-monogamy,
• For some, it’s a nice book with a beer on a beach. For others, it’s that same book in a dim cold room with a sweater and a cup of coffee.
• For some, it’s Netflix and (legitimate) chill time
• For some, it’s a game. For others, it’s the prize.
Find your “happy.”
While we’re on the subject, for those of us that know what our happy is, “what’s YOUR happy?” Leave me a comment below.
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Photo: GettyImages