to be happy
For as long as I can remember, every year on my birthday I would wish for the same thing. As I'd blow out my candles I'd squeeze my eyes and earnestly will to the world, "I wish to be happy."
Everyone knows the power of the birthday wish. It was no mistake that on this, the most “me” of all days when I had the ear of the universe uniquely bent in my direction, that this was my persistent request. Every year without fail I’d blow out candles and ask for the fulfillment of my impossible dream, the most farfetched reality I could imagine.
My favorite teacher in high school, foreign and direct, told me frankly “happiness only exists in moments.” I held that close to me in the years since, appreciating happiness as it flashed into my experiences, not attempting to lasso or corral it. Happiness was a jagged peak from which I’d have just enough time to glance around at the view from before once again descending.
I, like most of us, was my own mountain to climb, lugging the baggage I didn’t know who I’d be if I let go of. My stories weren’t particularly original, but I held them as close as orphans, perpetually nursing their endless wounds.
My mother didn’t love me, so I must be unlovable. In response I carefully curated the most palatable parts of myself and presented them to the world - a world that, unbeknownst to me, could actually see all of me and determined I was quite lovable.
I pursued the things this version of me would want and secured relationships with people whose approval would offer some commendation of the mask I’d devote my energy to preening and pruning. I’d get what I wanted, things that would please anyone, yet these victories were empty and my suspicious that my unhappiness was pathological was confirmed.
The pandemic contained a series of serious losses that stretched over two years. Loss after loss, grief broke me. I became a gelatinous blob of biology held in a human shape only by the stubbornness of my skeleton. I gently held Ram Dass’ words in my mind as everything else fell out of it. Suffering is a precursor to an opening, he said. Great pain breaks your will so that something new can emerge.
In the lethargy of grief I didn’t have the energy to maintain my masks or remember who I thought I was trying to be. I lost my preplanned templates of what I should have liked or not liked and yet decisions needed to be made. From the middle of the pile of ashes there would arise a small nudge that would move towards certain things and away from others. I was merely a witness to the self that was being revealed to me, doing my best to follow it’s whispered inclinations. When I would get it right tiny hands would clap and ankles kick in joy.
My soul had known for some time that I would leave my life in Austin and the death of my dog was the heave-ho I needed. I cried my way through the west, mourning not only my dog, but the end of the life I imagined I would keep living, the person I knew I’d never go back to being, and the me I hadn’t been while I was trying so hard not to be parts of myself. I cried for a year because that’s how many tears I had stored up from when I wasn’t strong enough to feel.
Alongside the tears there was waves of joy, perhaps only by contrast or because I was too weak to fear or resist it. By now I had held happiness in my gently cupped hands for longer than I’d thought I could. As I traveled I was continually in awe, which is easy to come by in California and Nevada, Mexico or Hawaii, but my life was transient and nothing sustained.
Happiness didn’t arrive with fanfare. There was no marching band or finish line whose ribbon I’d triumphantly break through. It was more like drops in a bucket that gradually filled while I was busy not judging myself for doing things I enjoyed or worrying about what others would think. I set out to find a place, a life that easily included the things I liked about life at Burning Man and had less of what didn’t care for about Austin. On Maui, I found exactly that.
A few months ago, still unsettled in Maui and moving around every few weeks, I realized I was happy, just happy. I enjoy doing the things I was doing and mostly doing things I enjoy. I’m surrounded by people who are gentle and kind and safe and who see and appreciate me - or whose seeing and appreciation I can finally take in.
For the first time my baseline is peace and ease. I cry when it’s time to cry and when I’m done I let go fully and go back to whatever is happening. I get annoyed, but that dissipates quickly, too. There are moments that pulse with intensity, but like my teacher said, it comes and fades again.
Last summer my fortieth birthday loomed on the horizon. Where would I be for this milestone? Who could I celebrate such a momentous day with when I had left my home and my friends? I felt a longing to be somewhere I loved, surrounded by people with whom I felt I belonged. In only 9 short months that felt impossible to cultivate, so I didn’t worry about it.
On May 8th I sat at the large dining table on Ram Dass’ back patio, surrounded by friends and ease, I changed my wish. I closed my eyes and beamed to the universe with an earnestness that almost ached:
May all beings be happy.
May all beings know peace.
May all beings be free from suffering.
Ram Dass was right. The best thing we can do for the world is to work on ourselves. When I was consumed with my own suffering I could want to wish the best for others, but I would tilt the table trying to find my own balance. Finally on solid ground within and around myself, I can become a beacon of happiness, a light whose flash may be seen by a distant ship I used to sail, one lost in the darkness that still dared to hope, even just once a year, that it would find it’s way home.