Happiness

*previously published on my tumblr*

If your twenties are all about you, then your thirties are all about happiness. Am I happy? What is happy? Is this it? I’m not sure what your forties are about, I’m not there yet, but I know your fifties are about how happy you are to be fifty, so happiness must occur somewhere before fifty, but after 39? Probably late forties. I think the early forties are spent trying to figure out reading glasses, how to use them undetected, what kind to buy, where you left them and eventually how to just not give a fuck and read the goddamn menu for yourself.

So, sometime after that: happiness.

I’m in my thirties, though, so I’m still questioning and over thinking and wondering if this is it. But I think I’m on a good path. It’s gravel and I’m barefoot, but I am fucking walking towards a pretty light, a pretty future. And I’m starting to discover some of the pieces from the happiness pie. Like kindness. Empathy comes with age, I think.  I mean, how much nicer are those bitches I went to high school with? Pretty nice nowadays. (Took twenty years, ladies). I’ve always been mostly nice, but I’m a people pleaser. Kindness is something else, though. It’s a presence. It’s eye contact. It’s remembering we are all made of stars as we argue our cable bill down.

Not giving a fuck is another piece. It seems to directly contradict “kindness” but maybe not. Sometimes when you give your children’s vitamins to the homeless man at your offramp, and listen to the beeping behind you, you have to not give a fuck about the asshole in the BMW so that you can be kind to the man who asked for a few vitamins for fuck’s sake. It’s even a kindness to yourself to do what you love and sing that Meatloaf song loudly and not give a fuck if someone thinks your taste in music is pedestrian.

Speaking of pedestrian music tastes, knowing yourself is definitely a pie piece. I’m actually pretty good at this one. A little too good. I do not play well in the suburbs. I’ve watched my neighbors back away slowly toward their house during our conversation. Inching, inching away from the crazy lady. Filtering is for losers.

What else to happiness? Knowing that “no” is a complete sentence? Yes. It’s another kindness to yourself to honor your feelings and not go see your friend’s weird play about television consumption full of penises and a grandma who knits in her rocking chair. (I went to that play. I was unkind to myself).

So, kindness, not giving a fuck, knowing yourself, “no-ing” yourself…what else? Red lipstick? For me this is one. This is a piece of happiness. It is an armor, a protection, a talisman; something I believe in that keeps me safe. Also, coffee. I think everyone has that thing they put on, repeat in their head, or simply do that imbues them with power. Like crossing oneself all Catholic like. Or saying, “I never did mind about the little things,” when you’re scared. If I put on red lipstick and drink an espresso, I’m unstoppable. Until the suffocating insecurity takes over. But, like, after that, red lipstick, yeah.

The trick must be remembering to do all these things every time. Because I do not. I forget. I get caught up in the little hurts, the bullshit of “life” that isn’t even real. I grab that hot coal to throw burning my own hand in the process. But I’m only in my thirties, so I have time. Time before I need the reading glasses that change my perspective and I see happiness in the tiny lettering in everything that I never noticed before.

Elaine de Kooning - Untitled - 1965