It seems utter nonsense at times that we manage to be happy one moment and inconsolably sad the next. Similar to another blogger who was fluently articulating how we can have little to no control over our emotions at times, in the same vein of thought, I pondered whether our happiness leaks theoretically  with time. Especially if we weren’t careful with whom we shared it with. Isn’t that why there are always some people in life you approach with caution, as if holding your breath during the encounter to keep this hypothetical measurement of happiness intact?

I thought about this in my ever so largely stubborn (naive, really) and perhaps even a self-defensive way, to capture happiness when I feel it strongly. How to remind myself when possibly in the next few hours, I’ll have easily forgotten my own feelings and thoughts?

I thought about why I felt happy today.

It started last night. [edit: two nights ago] I sent a last closure email to my ex. Some people might cringe at this, but I don’t care how unorthodox, or rather socially ‘shameful’ this should be – whoever decided reaching out was for the weak minded? – I know I’ve tried to masquerade and rush the process of a post break up too soon by saying so before, but I do genuinely feel good having written this email. It wasn’t a haranguing address, nor humiliating in the sense that I couldn’t let him go. We simply don’t respect each other’s lifestyles. The one common language we speak however is work ethic and success in life. So I wrote to him and set myself the goal to similarly command (not demand) and earn his respect in this aspect when I would have worked for and deserve it – project on the horizon – more on that another time. Perhaps.

Point is that I would walk away with something and see that everything happens for a reason. More on that later as well.

This feeling of goodness kept on when I woke up at 7am to train at the gym. I’ve expressed that working out and becoming a part time trainer has been the better part of my week. What resonates most strongly when I think about how to conceptualize what being a trainer means for me comes from my voice. Being a relatively soft spoken person (I used to cry when kids in the back of the school bus complained they couldn’t hear my standard introduction and I had to start all over again), I thought about how powerful a voice can be. In fact, even today I constantly repeat myself for guests in my full time work because of my voice. Or lack thereof. For the first time in my life now, I am taught to project it. Not figuratively as teachers like to teach as a feel-good solution for quiet children like myself, but a voice that resounded from your gut and rocked the cavity in your head. An effective puddy patch against any bad leaks from the world trying to deplete your happiness balloon. All from my own voice that I never knew I had.

I felt good even though it’s a 12 hour work day, with many more to come, because I have a goal to work towards.

Then I came home in between jobs and saw my roommate sitting in the same seat watching the same documentary as he had been the previous night because he has too much time on his hands being unemployed. I initially cast it out of my mind because it’s none of my business, yet somehow this one briefing irked me and before I knew it, my happiness balloon was slowly leaking despite myself.

Thinking back to how I can arrive at the gym early in the morning, readily swollen with endorphin’s to get me going. Or that I could construct an email to the man I had felt so insecure with, and boldly state I will in fact respect and love myself, declining the temptation to backspace onto those words for fear that I may appear self-indulgent; I realize I’m not a preordained happiness balloon. If it were so, I would have been crushed that I was denied a promotion recently based on petty work politics. Or still be crushed that my relationship failed. Or that I live with such a roommate that apparently bums me out, for lack of better words – Because everything does in fact happen for a reason, and in the chronicle of events that led up to me being able to become a trainer and taking on this project, I had met just the right circumstances and persons to do.

To be denied of my promotion meant I could even have the attention and time to realize my potential as a trainer. To be denied my desire of a relationship led me to instead walk away from someone who is now neither a friend nor lover, but a fellow entrepreneur who spoke to my determination to prove my words. To be kept uncomfortable in my current living situation against someone who has yet to find their drive in life makes me wake up each day to renew resilience in discipline.

No, I am not leaking happiness throughout the day. I may be tired, and some days may be grueling and emotionally tense, but my happiness is there. Sloshing however recklessly inside me before it settles into a clear reflection of who I am and why I am excited for what I plan to do. So if one other intelligent blogger can share that we all have haphazard emotional liabilities every so often (quite often), then I shan’t be above it.

 

 

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