"Are you happy? Is there anything I can do to make you happier?"
Being a bit broken and screwy from my past relationships (romantic and non), this question took me a bit by surprise. Very rarely, maybe once in a comet's orbit, has someone ever asked me "are you happy?" Sure, there are variations like "how are you doing?", "are you ok?", or even "did you have a good night?" but this one seems to catch me off guard. I suppose it's normal? Is it? I'm not sure. He told me that he's usually a bit nervous at the beginning of relationships because he wants to know that he's getting things right. Usually one might think that he has something to hide . . . and he might, I'm not ruling that out entirely but I don't think that's true.
The state of happiness is a funny one. Psychologists often think that we reach some sort of happiness plateau, that we all have a level of happiness that's determined by our personalities and only in extreme situations do we fluctuate from that level. I guess if that's true, then people really can be happy anywhere, you just have to wait long enough. It seems silly but when you think about having to adjust to a new place, a new job, or maybe even a new group of friends, you can transcend that "I'm new here" funk and go back to a place that you've once been. There are so many books on this topic and motivational speakers that will charge you about $500 a session to tell you about how they've achieved their own happiness but I think that it's a much more subjective matter than that. What makes one person happy may make another person completely miserable, to each one's own right?
And if that's the case, then I suppose I can say that in this moment, I am actually quite happy.
