Ever get the feeling you’re waking up, rousing from a slumber? Your auto pilot is glitching? I am hearing this frequently and it’s why I decided to create an album of tracks to attempt to help people going through this. So be reassured. You are not alone!
Questions about our choices and our own appraisal of our lives often focus on the concept of happiness.
Are we happy? Are we on the right path? Are we living a life we are proud of? When we are contemplating making changes to our lives (after considering what options we believe are available to us) we sometimes ask others to help us with decisions. It’s at this point that many people helpfully tell us that all they want for us is to be happy. It can be loaded though. Especially if what they are actually saying is ‘please be happy but don’t change anything that means I have to change my life.’
Not to mention the panic associated with the words ‘all I want is for you to be happy’.Let me have a go at unpacking this – all I want – ok, so it’s about you then?
But to be fair, this is often said in reaction to an outpouring of sadness or emotion from us. Perhaps we’re asking someone who feels they don’t want to have the responsibility for us making a ‘wrong decision’ and their response is ‘I don’t mind what you do, I just want you to be happy?’
But the pressure their response puts on us?? Argghhhhh. So ALL THEY WANT is for us to be happy. So we have to be happy!! But how? How often? How will we be happy? What makes us happy? What counts? Does a fleeting feeling of ‘yay’ when someone responds to a tweet count? Or the joy when our favourite crisps are back in the local shop (and so we go all out and buy two packets and eat one on the way home!) – anyone? just me, ok?....
So in the end, as all this is just too difficult and we’ve got a job to try to do and perhaps family commitments and god knows how many pressing distractions including navel gazing, just because you can, we end up getting on with our lives and surviving day to day. Happy mask firmly in place to placate those around us who we ‘know’ just want us to be happy, and before we know it a couple of years have gone by and we’re back here again. Is this all that there is? Is this life? Am I happy? Or am I put on this planet to struggle and strive? What is the meaning of life? What is the point of my life? Am I adding any value to the world? Would anyone notice if I wasn’t here? We are genuinely wondering what our place in the world is.
Still with me? I know this is somewhat deeper than deep. But we just HAVE to go there. We can go through our whole life allowing ourselves to be distracted but is that a waste perhaps? Do we have something to offer that is uniquely us? Something that we do effortlessly but that others find almost impossible. Perhaps we don’t value it so much because it comes so easily. Surely anything good is meant to be ‘hard work’? if it’s not hard work does it count? Is it a skill that we can be proud of ? does that seem fake? Is that even fair? How come we have that talent or skill or ability and others don’t seem to?
Then the pressure when we realise this, when we admit to ourselves that we do actually have a talent or skill that is pretty unique to us – are we making the most of it? What if we’re wasting our only talent, our gift!?!? And we’ve not even allowed ourselves to unwrap it yet!?
And we let life get back in the way. And so the cycle goes on. Until we have an “Awakening” and stop the cycle and stop “doing what we’ve always done” as that only gets us “what we’ve always got” and be brave enough to try something new, change the record, make one intervention that is different, in the hope that it disrupts the cycle and we’re spiralling off somewhere else, into the unknown. Wondering if we’re doing the right thing, using all our emotional strength to take the next step, gather our courage and walk towards a new future.