Happiness Horizon

If I can just push myself to get through this project, then, I can slow down and things will be good. 

Things are not good at home, but if I can just put up with it until tax time then I will have enough money to make a change. 

I can power through all this stress. Once summer comes I will have time to relax and sort everything out. 

If I just get this promotion...

When I buy this car... 

After the baby comes...

If I can find a partner... 

If I just had a good friend...

Doesn't life sometimes feel like a series of checkpoints you are suffering through? It is almost as if we are holding our breath from one tolerable situation to the next. Yet, those brief flashes of serenity never quite seem to last, do they? That perpetual grind through one difficulty after another seems to wear us down until there is so little of us left to even look forward to those all too abrupt blips of things just being good.

It feels really wrong, doesn't it? 

Life isn't supposed to be like that. You can feel it in your bones. Something guttural is constantly gnawing at you insisting that miserable shouldn't be the default state of the human condition. That leads you to identify what is oppressing you like money, relationship status, a better physique, or some other imagined condition that will unlock being happy.

You are right that life is not supposed to be like that. I lived a lot of years chasing the metaphorical holy grail. Not only did I never feel like I was ever getting the combination right, but the perpetual questing just wore me out. I stayed frustrated, depressed, and the worst part is I got to where I couldn't enjoy much of any part of my life. 

Turns out all that bullshit I was chasing for many years of my life was not the problem. I had allowed pop culture to define so much of my values that I was completely confused about what the standard measurement for contentment should actually be. I had my head so spun around that even if I stumbled across one of those rare and beautiful moments where everything seemed to become serene I wasn't able to relax and appreciate it.

I kept telling myself that once my situation was right and everything stacked up in this neat little order, then, and only then, would I have this fantastic sense of peace and serenity. This mentality is the problem. It keeps you searching and unhappy. I hate to be that guy, but it is a mentality encouraged by capitalism where the most effective marketing concept is." Your life is missing X. You will instantly get X if you buy Y. Y unlocks all your dreams. Buy Y now."

I wish that finding contentedness was as simple as buying new clothes, jewelry, a gadget, a car, or even a home. I have had a fair amount of all of that stuff over the course of my life. I have had shirts, blue jeans, rings, cars, and trucks that have certainly added joy to my life. At no point did I turn the key to a vehicle or slip on a pair of pants and say to myself," Well, there it is. All my problems are solved. From here on out there will be nothing but happiness and relaxation."

I had things backward for a long time. I kept trying to fit my happiness to the missing pieces of my life. The real thing I was missing wasn't a house, car, clothes, companionship, or a camper. I was missing an important perspective. I should have caught it from reading or watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I didn't. I missed it for a long time, but once I figured it out it was a pretty profound lesson. 

Harry is busy using the invisibility cloak to sneak Hogwarts during Christmas while everyone else including his buddy Ron is peacefully asleep or home with their families. He stumbles across the Mirror of Erised. In it he sees his deceased family. Later, Ron ends up with him and instead of Ron seeing Harry's family, Ron sees himself with tons of accomplishments that make him special and important. Neither Harry nor Ron figure out how the mirror works. Dumbledore, who I believe gave Harry the time with the mirror to prepare him for the confrontation ahead, explains the function of the mirror saying," It shows nothing more or less than the secret desire of your heart...The happiest man in the world would look in the mirror and see himself exactly as he is."

Any incorrect explanations or misquotes (which I am doing from memory) are totally my fault. One interpretation of this idea is that the happiest man in the world would not be impacted by the magic of the mirror of Erised because he wants for nothing. Another perspective would be, the man is completely content with what he has and who he is. That second part is important. 

The world we live in is not a perfect place. The reason for that is because it is full of imperfect people. Why, then, do we naïvely imagine that there is some way to find a perfect situation and wait on that situation to finally allow ourselves to feel satisfied and content. Seems an unlikely thing to come to pass.

As long as we are chasing solutions or missing pieces, we are going to remain unhappy. Peace, contentment, and serenity come with accepting that our situation, our selves, our families, our world, and our lives are always going to be imperfect and less than ideal. Not only an acceptable thing but it is actually a virtue. Having never experienced it I am not a reliable witness, but I suspect that true perfection is pretty boring. Yes, that does make me concerned a bit about Heaven.

I can already hear that there are extreme athletes, relentless self improvement gurus, and car salesmen shouting down this idea. Yes, they might say, you are never done growing and improving. You should always be pushing forward. The chase is the point. Life is a journey not a destination. Of cours,e you should never be satisfied with what you have. The goal of happiness should always be on the horizon. 

To that let me say, you feel that way because if you slow down and really examine your self and your life you aren't going to much like what you see. You feel good always having a target to chase because it is the perpetual distraction. The bad news is life slows you down and makes a perpetual chase impossible on a long enough time line. Eventually, you are going to really regret not slowing down and appreciating the ride.

Do you know how I know that? I have been on relentless trips in a car. You know the ones I am talking about? Those trips where you were a kid and your parent warned you that they had Some Place To Be and managed to actually pronounce and enunciate all the capital letters. The statement," I am not making a whole lot of bathroom stops, neither," likely got tossed out there. You were expected to get it and keep yourself quiet for HOURS while all these new and interesting things were just passing you by at approximately the speed of sound. 

There may have even been an itinerary. Talk about something that will suck the life and fun out of nearly any situation except for the person trying to pull of said itinerary. If the rush was valid or not, getting caught up in one of those trips is a major bummer. The destination seems impossibly far away even when it isn't. The whole attitude of the affair just makes it miserable. Can't a kid just look at useless junk at a Stuckeys for a few minutes? Shit!

For me at least, that is what chasing the ever moving target of situational happiness is like. It is a bit like believing that I will finally be able to stop, set up camp, and rest just as soon as we cross the horizon. Somehow the horizon never quite gets here. The mountains are always in the distance. 

Expanding on that metaphor, let me offer the solution. Why not stop here and make the best of what you can enjoy now? It might not be that mountain camp ground you thought you wanted. There may not be as much shade as you like, but you can still stretch out in the camper and get some shut eye. You might grab a really satisfying bite to eat at a local diner. There might be a few worthwhile things to see that will catch your fancy. You can rest, relax, and refresh and maybe tomorrow you will be able to enjoy the journey more instead of feeling like you cannot be happy until you go to that mystical destination. 

That is the solution I stumbled on to in life. Things are not ever going to be perfect so I might as well be perfectly happy with things as they are. When things change, I will be as happy as I can be with that too. This attitude has gained me an amazing amount of personal freedom without the fetters of living for the future. 

Take my personal fitness journey. I started my adult years carrying a bit of extra fat, but you likely wouldn't have called me obese because I am tall and my shoulders were broad. I started out with a bit of a gut. It didn't bother me to be a bit pudgy though I wasn't likely to tuck in my shirt if it could be helped. I spent a decade or so pretending I did not care about my weight, eating terrible foods, avoiding exercise, and enjoying lots of activities that encouraged me to be sedentary. 

I woke up in my mid thirties fat. To be fair, not really. I had grown fatter along the way, but I really felt fat at that point. The realization was followed quickly by determination to do something about it. One Friday after work I went down to the office gym and was determined to walk five miles on the treadmill or die trying. 

It took a lot longer than it should have but I made the five miles. I got determined to get in shape. I also came to appreciate exercise even when it hurt. I dropped triple digit weight going from nearly 450 pound to the top end of the 290 scale. I still had a long way to go, but the journey behind me was impressive. 

Then I had an allergic reaction which caused a scare with my heart. I totally overreacted. I changed jobs. I stopped exercising. My habits changed and the weight started to return quickly. I hid from all of this with more sedentary activities justifying them as the right path for me because now they were more social things like Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and board game nights. None of that stuff was bad, but sucking down a large pizza or a huge container of teriyaki chicken while hanging with my friends was not doing my weight any favors. 

When I realized I needed to make a lifestyle change, now for income and insurance, I headed back into the corporate world. I burned some bridges unintentionally though probably more in my head than in reality. Sitting in a call center will pack weight on a person. I gained the call center 40 and kept ticking up the scale. 

When my mother died the mortician didn't focus on her broken ankle which threw a blood clot and killed her. No, they listed it as complications of diabetes and super morbid obesity. I would say that it is a technically correct diagnosis, but a thin and fit person can die suddenly from a blood clot. It put a bit of a chip on my shoulder and I became determined to lose weight again. This time it was different. 

Throughout my fat guy journey I haven't had that terrible a body image. I swim with a shirt on in an outdoor pool for the same reason I wear light weight long sleeves in the summer. I don't like sunburns. I have always had parts of my anatomy that I wasn't fond of. For example, in high school, my buddy Dwight commented that my legs looked like upside down bowling pins. We have thighs in my family. I was always aware of this. 

Mom's death changed that. Suddenly, I found myself disliking the skin I was in. I was motivating myself through negative self talk. Every time I was hiking House Mountain I was scolding myself," Get up that hill you fat bitch!" Once you lose these love handles then you can slow down a little. I lost a lot of weight through healthy exercise and very unhealthy motivation. 

Then the pandemic hit. I could be disciplined with my eating in the office. At home I could feed my face without worrying about the judgements of others. I gained weight even as I exercised. I added shame to my mental health complications. Now I wasn't even telling myself that I could be happy as I lost weight. I was just wallowing in a puddle of twinkies and self loathing. 

The hard part came into play as the family actually caught Covid-19. I would say my recovery started after about six months, but the truth is I am still occasionally getting lingering symptoms such as smelling burning smells that are not present or being winded when I have indigestion. Those things never happened before that sickness. \

Covid-19 did a good thing for me though. It made me realize that I couldn't take my health for granted. I recentered  my thinking and realized that the person who was relentlessly driving themselves up difficult hiking trails with self flagellation was miserable even with the accomplishments in the moment. I was keeping myself unhappy because I wasn't at a goal. 

The path to losing weight had to come from a place of compassion, self acceptance, and happiness even though I am much closer to that critical place where I started my fitness journey in 2014 than I have ever been since. Last Wednesday I unexpectedly ended up walking four and a half miles while wearing the wrong clothes and wrong shoes. I found myself winded and uncomfortable. That could have made me incredibly negative and mentally flogging myself about how I could let myself go again. 

Instead, I found myself proud. Mentally I was saying," Yes. You are huffing and puffing, but you made it not long after the fit people." I gave myself permission to sit down and catch my breath rather than acting tougher than I felt. I wasn't ready to admit that I wore the wrong shoes just yet. That would come once I got home and had some decent blisters. 

This may not sound like a big change of having compassion for myself and happiness in the moment. It is though. In fact it is a huge evolution in my thinking and feeling. Previously, if I had suddenly found myself out of my depth with people much more healthy than me then I would have become bitter, angry, and unable to enjoy myself because of the internal scorn. The reason for those feelings is that I wasn't giving myself to be happy along the way. 

Now, even out of breath and red faced, I am able to enjoy the journey. I see the little investments I am making as encouragement even when the results aren't visible. That mindset is allowing me to look at my choices without judgement. Honestly, I knew I was going to eat poorly for a few days last week. I gave myself permission to indulge without guilt. A burger or two isn't going to destroy my journey. I even have a few snack cakes in my pantry that I have been partaking in. I have fallen off the wagon, but rather than feel shame I am respecting that I needed a little indulgence before tightening my willpower for the next push. 

As we get out of the cold and into the peak of outside activity weather exercise gets a lot more accessible. Sure, my exercise bike could have been used a lot more during the winter. I knew that I was working on some mental things during that time which were eating up my effort bandwidth. Rather than be unhappy or motivate myself for the horizon, I gave myself permission to be happy as I worked through even though I wasn't getting the progress I desired on my waistline. 

That is the difference in my 2014, 2018, and modern pushes for being more healthy. In 2014 and 2018 I was chasing a state that I believed would have made me happy. Now, I am happy with myself and the growth I am going through is adding to and enhancing that happiness rather than being tied to a result. I believe fully in myself exactly as I am. That allows me to be more self compassionate when the exercise gets difficult and still keep going. I am not going to negatively motivate myself to a standstill. 

That is the secret to all of this. You only get to live each heartbeat one time. There is great power with being happy regardless of the circumstances. To do this you have to accept the past as it is already written. You live in the here and now fully engaged in the adventure you are on. It is ok to look to the future, but do not allow yourself to detach from the present as you do. Making plans is ok. Obsession is not. 

Invest in being fully present and excited for your current circumstances. That is where true freedom lies. I imagine even if I were locked away alone in a tiny, dark windowless cell without any external stimulus that I could find a way to be happy with myself. Granted, I do not want to test that since this mindset is fairly new to me. I just know that if you are always seeking happiness on the horizon you are missing a ton of great things along the way.