drwex | Jul. 11th, 2018

Happiness is letting go of what you assume your life is supposed to be like right now and sincerely appreciating it for everything that it is. At the end of this day, before you close your eyes, smile and be at peace with where you’ve been and grateful for what you have. Life is good.

What do you appreciate most about your present life situation? Why?

OK, back to troll mode. I am innately suspicious of anyone who starts a sentence with "happiness is..." and then concludes with a grand prescription about life. I mean, if you said "Happiness is being able to roll around on the floor with a pack of friendly puppies" I'd be right there. Likewise, "happiness is closing my eyes and letting my earphones fill with a beloved tune," - count me in! Realizing the happiness in moments and activities is a necessary sanity-maintaining thing for me. In fact, I have a routine (that includes both a puppy and music) that I use when I start to feel things like my SAD coming on me.

But none of these are grand pronouncements about what happiness "is" in life. And if "life is good" for you, then that's nice. Meanwhile, people in Puerto Rico still don't have power, in Flint they don't have reliable safe water, and our government is putting children under six through some absurd kangaroo court proceedings and pretending this is something other than mass child kidnapping on a scale Boko Haram can only dream about. I'd venture to say that life is NOT good for these people.

Earlier in this series I said that misery contests have no winners, and I still believe that's true. Even before our election was stolen and our government handed to a Russian stooge and his cabal of thieving oligarchs things were not great everywhere. Remember Occupy? And so on? Yeah, we can't wallow in misery without self-destructing or ceasing to be feeling human beings. But we all have to be conscious of what's going on in the world, particularly these days. "Team Sidelines" is no longer a viable option.

That said, it's still possible, and wise, to appreciate things about one's current life situation. So here's a quick off-the-cuff gratitude list:

- Pygment. Because everything.
- my kids. Because despite everything.
- my job. Because I get paid ridiculous amounts for very easy work that I enjoy doing.
- puppy! Because puppy! (what a dumb question)
- my house. Because it's got a lot of defects but I've molded to them and they to me over nearly two decades. I am never "at home" out of my own environment. When we sell and move it's going to be major trauma for me.
- my gaming group. Despite wanting more/different players it's still a fun diversion.
- my friends. Because they'll take time to do things with me, tell me things, give me feedback and advice and help keep me from getting too narrowly focused.
- my online friends. Because it's fun to talk with people and learn about lives distant and unlike mine and the gaming environment often provides ways we can gently compete or cooperate that has much lower overhead than doing these things in physical life.
- my neighborhood. The town I live in is still more conservative, more religious, and more blue-collar than I am. But it's still got good-hearted people in it and the town has gotten more multicultural, more aesthetic, and generally grown with the times.