Love & Happiness

Remember when you were growing up and you imagined what you would be when you grew up? I remember going through about 20 different things over the course of my childhood. I wanted to be, at various times, a circus performer, a cop (like my stepdad), a teacher, a professional camp counselor, a soldier, and a politician. I had fully planned on being the first woman president until I found out that I couldn’t be because I was born in another country. I wondered, ever so briefly, how I'd stack up to the 524 other kids I graduated with who probably experienced similar childhood fantasies. I am none of the things I once imagined, now, all these years later. I’ve was once a soldier and also had several other jobs not listed. It seems to me I had not even heard of the thing I do when I was making my crazy career choices at 10. Am I disappointed though? Not at all.

Do you remember imagining your dream life when you grew up? Perhaps that perfectly chiseled husband with a fabulous career in advertising, the 2 magical kids, the large house in the suburbs (think Darrin and Samantha Stephens)? It’s funny, I never imagined as a child being a parent or even being with someone. I kind of always pictured me alone, doing what I wanted or needed to do. But, unlike my clearly, if randomly selected career goals, I have done all of these things. Being a parent has been the singularly most joyful, sad, scary, fabulous, exciting, and fulfilling ride I’ve ever been on. It’s also been relatively successful, my parent experience.

There was an article published in Salon today (a must-read site for any of my co-fuzzy-minded liberal friends) about Steven Hayes, a University of Nevada at Reno professor whose newest book, "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life," coauthored with Spencer Smith, earned him "a splashy profile in the Feb. 13 edition of Time magazine." In it, he basically asserts that happiness does not exist without suffering. That we all spend an awful lot of time trying to find this perfect state of happiness, and in the meantime, forget to live.

Once, I was so fabulously head over heels in love I could barely think of anything else. It was this once-in-a-lifetime numinous experience that gave me the highest kinds of highs I have ever felt. When it was over, I was devastated and sure I would not survive. But, looking back, I would not have traded having such an experience for anything. The pain subsided eventually, and I’m left with the knowledge that I am capable of those kinds of feelings and have experienced them again, in various forms, with other fellow travelers through life.

I’m embracing the fact that without pain, one would have no way of quantifying happiness. That living to the fullest means experiencing life in all its forms with all its agonies, ecstasies, torments, elations, and silliness. So, I laugh, I cry, I am disappointed, and I am surprised by my position in life—it’s pretty freakin’ great. And, were I to ever actually show up for a class reunion, I’d hold my head high, and say, “You all ain’t got nothin’ on me!”

Mama always said life was like a box a chocolates, 
never know what you're gonna get.

~Forrest Gump

Originally Published: Feb 25, 2006