Shiny Happy Problems

Posted by fxckfeelings on May 20, 2013

It’s appropriate that singer Mary J. Blige had a hit singing, “I just wanna be happy” since her best songs were about being miserable. Everybody thinks they want happiness, but like wealth, fame, and everything else on Blige’s own episode of Behind the Music, happiness is too erratic and temporary to set your hopes on, and concerning oneself too much with it is a good way to get a headache and feel like a loser. Instead, think hard about the values that give you direction, whether you’re happy or not. If they’re good values, they’ll always take you in the right direction and will give you strength, regardless of whether you have another hit.
–Dr. Lastname

I fell in love with the wonderful work I was doing in South Africa, but in the two years since I returned to the States, I still struggle with connecting and finding friendships or a relationship with meaning. In South Africa, I worked with an organization that rehabilitated inner-city gang kids to get them back in the public school system. The experience was life changing. I fell in love with the children I worked with, the mentality of the locals, the culture, and the relationships I built with like-minded volunteers. Unfortunately, since I’ve been back, my connections with my friends were no longer the same because they could not relate to the life and experiences I lived abroad. I’m in my mid-20s, and my life is good in many ways, but most of my friends are getting married, having children, or going to graduate school now, and I am at a stand still…stuck in time with memories I wish I was still living. I want to be able to relate and understand the people in my life. I want to feel fulfilled and in love with my surrounding and the life I’m living again.

The trouble with wonderful, life-transforming jobs is that they don’t actually transform your life, just your expectations. The stars align for a brief period of self-discovery and fulfillment, but then the earth keeps rotating, and the stars shift away again.

Even though good times like that inherently can’t last, they still leave you feeling that, if you were able to find it once, you should be able to find it again. Unfortunately, good luck, like bad luck and the earth on its axis, moves on, whether you like it or not, sometimes leaving you not just with a sense of loss, but also of having missed the boat.

In addition, the uniqueness of your experience is impossible to communicate to someone who wasn’t there, so you have the same problem as a returning battle-tested veteran; no one but another veteran can really understand your story, and even though your experience was positive instead of conducive to PTSD, it’s very isolating.

Obviously, you can take what you’ve learned about life and yourself in South Africa into the next phase of your life, in terms of discovering how much you love to teach kids and help them gain basic skills. What you can’t necessarily do, however, is re-create the whole package—the culture, colleagues, kids, and a unique sense of connectedness. It sounds as if you were unusually lucky, and moving on has left you with a huge, unavoidable loss.

If you make your sense of connectedness a yardstick for measuring the meaningfulness of your current work or relationships, you are probably setting an unattainable goal and one you can’t control. It would be nice if you could be “in love with your surrounding and the life you’re leading,” but it’s probably not possible. Pursuing happiness is usually not good for you, but in your case, the bar for happiness has been set so high that trying to reach for it just sets you up for a harder fall.

Instead, review the values that were strengthened by your South Africa experience and that are worthwhile pursuing, even if they don’t result in happiness—they obviously include an interest in educating, giving, and helping others—and in pursuing those values in your work and friendships now, don’t ask yourself whether you feel the old magic, and if you don’t, why not. Instead, ask yourself whether you’re making the best compromises you can with what you have in front of you, and whether you’re heading in the direction set by your values.

You may need to try many different jobs, or settle for a good partner and co-parent who will never really understand your South Africa experience, or generally come to accept that life will never feel as good as it did then. As long as you’re true to your values, and making good decisions, you have reason to be proud of what you’re doing.

Indeed, there’s more reason to be proud when you’re doing good things and not getting much satisfaction. Even if the stars don’t perfectly align again, there will be other pleasing configurations.

STATEMENT:
“I feel I’ve had to leave my real life behind me and no one understands how I feel, but I know that all good things have to come to an end and that my current doldrums are unavoidable. I remain determined to help others, make the world a better place, and find a partner who shares my values.”

I’ve always taken pride in my ability to take life as it comes and live in the moment. I never really had a dream job or life plan, but girls have always liked me and I’m very sociable, so it’s been easy for me to make a good living as a bartender and have a ball. Then, whenever I have a little more money, I take a month off and go visit friends who live somewhere near a beach or a mountain. I love drinking and it’s easy to have a few on the job (but I never drive drunk or anything), so I’ve always thought of myself as living the dream. At least until recently, when I noticed that some of my friends no longer have time to hang out because they’re raising kids, or having important jobs, or are just into AA. It’s depressing, because there’s nothing in life I really want to do more than have fun and I’m getting a feeling the good times are over. My goal is to figure out how to keep the good times rolling.

Enjoying your life and feeling happy are usually taken as evidence of success, when, in reality, all they mean in your case is that you have the good luck to be young, likeable, healthy, attractive, and blessed with a mellow disposition. Perhaps your good luck is also bad luck because, with all that easy-to-enjoy happiness and free-flowing sex and booze, you have never been forced to think about other priorities and whether there’s anything more important. Well, congratulations and condolences, because that time has now arrived.

If the good times stop rolling or leave bigger hangovers, don’t take it as evidence of failure; if you pay too much attention to your unhappiness, you’ll try even harder to be happy, which will lead you down the same well-worn dead end paths. Instead, take it as an invitation to find new meaning in life, now that the old meaning—the pursuit of happiness—isn’t working out and seems to be going nowhere.

Stop being in the moment, open your mind to fearful thoughts, and think through the options that would best secure your independence, safety, and a network of good, solid friends. Ask yourself whether you want a steady partnership, now that your old friends are either disappearing or becoming impaired. Also, consider whether or not you need to think harder about investing and saving, now that you know you can’t take your health or job for granted, and whether your drinking get in the way of these goals.

Ask yourself how you intend to manage your life as you age or under conditions when happiness is not an option. This self-questioning will not make you happy, at least not in the short run, but it’s worth ignoring, because if you don’t find more important things to think about than happiness, misery is inevitable.

With luck, you’ll find that your pleasure in talking to people can help you do more for them, and yourself, than getting them drunk and you laid, like securing a job for yourself that doesn’t require you to be attractive and stand on your feet all day. You may find you value the ability to count on a friend, and be counted on, for more than a good time.

Then, whether you find yourself bored, unhappy, or missing your drinking buds, you may also give yourself a future with a meaning that will grow stronger with time, rather than disappear the next morning.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’m losing control of a life that has been going very, very well, but I can see a dead end coming and I know there’s more to life than having a good time. It’s time I re-evaluated what’s important and develop new goals before I get demoralized by where my current life is going.”