Are You Happy?

A few days ago the Instagram algorithm led me to a friend I hadn’t heard from or seen in a very long time. There are simply those moments in life when people drift apart in the middle of everything life throws at them. No, there are no fights or quarrels, your paths just take you, often enough, to completely different corners of the world.

When you talk for the first time to someone who has no idea that you already have five and a half years of motherhood behind you, it’s more than obvious that far too much time has passed since you last spoke.

There are those people whom, even after so much time, you have nothing to ask, because you have either forgotten everything about them or you have simply drifted so far apart that every conversation feels forced, and not only that, but like some kind of competition, where you take turns recounting the successes in your lives. Hardly anyone talks about the bad things that have happened. And the only logical question that gets asked, and is rarely followed by a meaningful follow-up, is “so, what’s new?”.

How pointless it is to ask that of someone you haven’t seen in years!

What do you even say to something like that?

Do you talk about what’s new in your life compared to yesterday, which they have no idea about anyway, or do you try your hardest to remember the moment your contact stopped and start from there?

But how much do you, and that other person, honestly care what new things have marked your life since that reference point until today?

Yes, I too think that in a great many cases that question is only there to fill the unbridgeable gap in the conversation between two people who once knew each other.

And then there are those other people who, however long you haven’t seen or heard from them, you can’t wait to hear everything that has happened in their lives. And however many messages you exchange, you are still hungry for more. Because that’s that kind of friendship.

And it was exactly that kind of friend I “met” on Instagram a few days ago. And unlike many of the “fake friends” from the previous paragraph, there was no empty question about what’s new, but the essential one: “are you happy?”

At first I was glad that anyone even cared, because it means they care enough about me to ask that question at all. So my first reaction was a smile.

And then the smile faded from my face, because I realised I didn’t know what to answer.

Okay, we hadn’t spoken in a long time, so they probably mean in general, whether I am happy with my life.

And how could I not be, when I have a beautiful family?

And then you stop and ask yourself the same question, silently but also out loud, so that it becomes real and tangible.

Are You Happy?

The automatic answer would be “yes, of course”, because when someone doesn’t really care to hear the answer, that’s the answer they’d expect, right?

But if we look deep inside ourselves, do we dare admit that maybe, despite everything, we are not quite completely happy?

We are alive, healthy in these crazy times, we have a healthy family, a wonderful child, a dog…

But I still can’t find a job that makes enough sense to me and brings both emotional and financial satisfaction, every day I wonder whether our visa will be renewed or whether we’ll have to move on or move back, and a thousand other questions pile up on the scale that could realistically tip it towards the negative answer to that question.

Am I happy?

Yes and no.

And that’s okay.

Yes, I am happy in my private life. But I am more than unhappy about my professional path. I could never have imagined that things would move (or not move) this slowly.

And yes, there’s all that “think positive”, work on yourself, work hard and so on. But what if even all of that isn’t enough for the “stars” to align and for that part of life to get going too?

And can you be happy when “only” one part of you is fulfilled and the other is empty?

And can you really “have it all”, as marketing has long been trying to convince us? You can do it all, you can have it all?! And only then is complete happiness guaranteed, because otherwise there must surely be something wrong with you?

I refuse to believe that.

Wait, wouldn’t that mean we are all unhappy, because realistically there are few, far too few, people who have it all: family and health and money and the job they want and friends and a hundred other “relevant” parameters.

Or are we only happy when we tell ourselves: what I have is okay and quite enough to be happy, and the rest I will do my best to fix and fill in, so that that part of me also gets that positive premise and goes into the column ticked as happy.

No, I don’t believe there is a single equation that guarantees that state, because then the answer to the question would be easy and simple.

What happiness is, each of us obviously has to define for ourselves, because my idea of happiness and yours are surely very different.

And on the other hand, is it even realistic to be happy all the time, or is it some place that doesn’t exist, a state we strive for or long for all our lives? Modern consumerism has managed to exploit that longing beautifully: happiness guaranteed only if you buy this or that, because that very thing will fulfil your life. It won’t. And nobody else’s scale will do it either. So you have to build your own.

And what did I answer my friend in the end?

Yes, I am happy in my private life, and it has turned out better than I ever could have imagined. But there are parts of me, especially the “professional” ones, that are far from that feeling.

And you?

And no, I didn’t ask that question just to take the focus off myself, I genuinely wanted to know. So it really shook me that their answer wasn’t even remotely as positive as mine. And then I felt bad. I don’t know why, because I really hadn’t done anything wrong. But when you care about someone, and you feel good, surely it’s only natural to want them to feel the same way, right? Or is it just me who has that deeply developed “people pleasing” gene?

Well, I don’t have a clear answer to this question either, but I know that a friendship that makes you think like this is worth a lot, because it makes you reflect and be better to yourself, and then to others.

And that means a lot in this superficial world, where the people who should be close to you don’t even ask the most basic “how are you”, and even when they do, you can see they don’t really care about the answer. So one short “great” satisfies both sides. You don’t want to talk about reality, whatever it may be, and the person who asked doesn’t want to hear it.

Hold on to the people in your life who ask the right questions and genuinely care about an honest answer.

Warmly,

S-Mama