The Fleeting Nature of Happiness

Around 6:30am one morning, I was caught feeling immensely overwhelmed and if I am honest, a bit sorry for myself thinking about all the unexpected *h*t that has happened so far in 2019 and saying over and over in my head “I just want to be happy, how hard can that be”. Unexpectedly and almost intrusively, I remembered something I had recently completed and strangely enough, that’s all it took for me to throw off the covers and start my day.

I am not Jamaican but I’ve been here for a while, maybe just over 4 years or so and one of the things I always wanted to do was climb the Blue Mountains. I didn’t know who I’d do it with or when but I just knew it had to be done before I left. An opportunity eventually presented itself and I jumped at it.  Let me give you some background…Jamaica’s Blue Mountain stands at 7402 feet above sea level and is the highest point in this, the land of Beef Patty, Dancehall and Reggae, fried fish, bun and cheese and of course, Bob Marley. It is 18km of steep terrain and round trip takes about 9 hours. Now, somehow, I was naïve enough not to be phased by the sheer grandeur of this task until it was time to leave at 1:30am and I had not gotten anywhere near enough sleep. I woke up and said quiet loudly with a hint of anxiety in my voice “what the hell am I doing!”. Yikes…definitely NOT the time to think that! Anyway, we started the journey, and all was well until maybe just over 1/4 of the way and let me tell you…I was actually getting angry. We had been hiking for what seemed to be a million years and still no sign of the peak. A few more hours passed and still trudging along. By this time, I was furious at the guide and everyone else on the hike as though it was their fault that the mountain was this tall and it was taking forever to reach…don’t worry I kept most of that anger inside…only a little seeped out 😀

These emotions were somewhat unusual for me since I am not typically someone who complains a lot and I have also been on few hikes before. However, I powered through, stopping to eat a granola bar or two, or three and have a drink of water (so as to not die from dehydration or I don’t know…exhaustion? Lol) ever so often. As the rays of sunlight began to slowly play hide and seek with the clouds, the fog began to lift a little and a soft pink hue painted the sky.

A kilometer again or maybe a little more and we were at the peak. It was foggy and cold but it was picturesque in the most unique way, scattered with flowers known only to grow at that spot in Jamaica because of the temperature and a quaint little shed for travellers to rest. There were a few seconds where a strong wind would blow and part the clouds for us to see the stunning and expansive view as we stood in the morning dew and in those moments, freezing our a**es off…it was all worth it.

Stay with me, I promise there is a point to all my rambling!

One of the greatest yearnings of life is to find happiness.

The psychologist, Michael Fordyce states that personal happiness is generally held to be the most important goal in life. He says that throughout history, it has been seen as the ultimate end of temporal existence. Aristotle’s ancient view that “happiness is so important, it transcends all other worldly considerations” differs little from William James’ more modern, psychological observation that “happiness is for most men, at all times, the secret motive of all they do”

In this quest we seem to train our minds to believe that getting to that point would be easy or at least within our comfort zones and then when we are in the middle of it we realise “crap, this is not what I signed up for” and much like what happened to me on that mountain, we get angry or we begin to doubt that we can still overcome. We also expect that when we finally attain what we’ve been working so hard to achieve, the ecstasy and joy we feel would last forever, when in fact it is so fleeting.

“One of the great perversions of industrialized society is the idea that happiness is not something to continually work for but something to capture all at once at certain points in time.”

To stand at the top and look back at all you’ve accomplished is one of the most fulfilling feelings. However, it should not be forgotten that happiness, just like sadness or anger are emotions which come and go depending on the circumstances. An emotion is a feeling comprising physiological and behavioural reactions to internal and external events (R, Sternberg, 1998) and reflect the intense arousal of brain systems that strongly encourage the person to act impulsively (Panksepp, Jaak).

Often, when we are close to the end and the tiredness sets in it is easier to want to turn back or even stay where you are than to look ahead and know that there’s more work to be done. But if that mountain showed me anything, it is that despite how difficult and treacherous the road may seem or how long it may take the view is always worth it at the end but you have to be present neither looking back nor too far ahead at the next mountain you have to climb to be able to fully enjoy that moment of happiness, to let it seep into your bones and know that you accomplished what you set out to. I have struggled with the concept of how short happiness lasts and I realized that because of this, many times the past seems so much better than my reality. Sitting on a rock on top of that mountain, eating my crumby granola bar, all I wanted was to be lying in bed asleep or having a cup of coffee…anything but the torture I was enduring. But in the end, would I have done it any other way? Hell no! Another blogger I came across said it best

“Life is a constant negotiation. You’re here for every moment of it, so don’t defer being happy in the present for the promise of being content sometime down the road. It’s important to have goals, but they shouldn’t lead you to forestall joy in anticipation of some emotional salvation that will never come. Happiness doesn’t exist at some vague point in the future because all we can ever know is the now” – Eli

Do not stake your emotional security on chronological benchmarks such as getting a job, getting married, buying a home etc. While it is important to enjoy all of these sometimes inability to attain them can leave us feeling broken or inadequate because the joy we thought was waiting for us, failed to ever materialize. It is so much more important to savour every little victory along the way because even if a yearning never materializes, you would still have conquered!

I have been climbing and conquering mountains all my life and I’m sure you have been as well. Hopefully this would serve as a reminder of how much of a badass you actually are!