I was once convinced it was my fault that my incurable disease remained stubbornly ablaze because I couldn’t muster enough optimism to quench it. And the “healers” I depended on allowed me to believe this.

 

Unhappiness.

 No one ever says to sit with it, to wallow, linger, to break it down.

Rather—

Evade, evade, evade.

Run.

Deny.

Hide.

Be ashamed—be very ashamed.

And use it as an excuse for everything.

 

As if it’s an explanation, a reason, a given, when it comes to making sense of undesirable or confounding human behavior—they were always such an unhappy person.

 

But what is unhappiness really, and why do we dread it so?

 

Why is happy the only acceptable way to be in life? I can’t say I’ve unraveled the threads that weave into the fabric of unhappy, but I have learned to do everything in my power to turn the frown upside down. I’ve known what’s expected of me, and I’ve tried to squeeze into that bouncy cookie-cutter time and again and from all angles, but there are always parts of me that refuse to be contained, that squeeze through the cracks.

 

I am not bouncy; I don’t know how to pretend, how to rah-rah my way through life, and I’ve borne the ridicule of that. I have come to accept heaviness, cynicism, and tears as a few of my numerous flaws, ones that I must protect those around me from, as a matter of fact. But as I’ve continued to mature and to cast off the mantles of expectation when it comes to what is accepted and pursued en masse, I find myself sitting contentedly savoring the bitterness and pondering happy as an idea rather than a state, and what it means to use it as the ultimate barometer of a life well lived.

 

All of my efforts to deconstruct my gloom are rooted in the belief that, somehow, my personhood itself is incomplete or malformed if my smiles and laughter aren’t more plentiful than my sighs and tears. I’ve long recoiled from what is now referred to in popular culture as toxic positivity—it took a global pandemic to finally get us to recognize that one, for enough people to say, you really want me to find the silver lining here? —it never felt genuine. And while I agree that there is absolutely a time and a place for silver linings, and that our uncanny ability to find them is the thing that makes humans so resilient, I would also posit that, without a doubt, unhappy is a far more common human condition than happy.

 

So, what if we stopped trying to fix unhappy? What if we didn’t run so desperately from it? After all, Eeyore was probably an empath, and despite his persistent gloom, his friends loved him anyway. His pessimistic self was just who he was, but as part of the clan, they just made room for him instead of insisting he be more like them or marginalizing him for dragging them down.

 

Maybe let’s take a page out of that old children’s story.

 

How many valuable friendships, relationships, and opportunities are shattered because they don’t fit inside the tiny box of happy? Happiness isn’t real as a singular interpreted thing. It’s an elusive construct that we’re constantly chasing.

 

For a while now, I’ve been picking through the expectation of happy and the assertion that a life well-lived is a happy one and that a person who is complete and well-balanced is one who has found happiness. As I’ve spent time exploring the nooks and crannies of this notion, I’ve thought about my children quite a bit. I’ve considered the pressure of a condescending idea such as this when applied to the lives and choices we make, especially to young and malleable humans.

 

Happiness, as an expectation in the context that most of us experience it, the bouncy, incessantly chipper, turn-the-frown-upside-down sense, carries a heaviness of perfection that is unattainable, which perpetuates a persistent feeling of falling short of some ultimate achievement. This, I’ve concluded, is unproductive at best, harmful at worst, and ladened with a perpetual urgency to pretend.

 

I have decided that I unequivocally reject using happy as the barometer for a life well-lived or some sort of ultimate achievement.

 

So, then I have to ask myself, what would I choose instead to be the barometer, to fill the need we have to judge everyone’s wellness by how they fill space in the world? When asking myself questions like these, I often answer them by articulating what I want for my children. What would I wish for them?

 

And it isn’t a false sense of vibrant bubbliness or the nagging expectation to have the courage (it’s not courage, it’s denial) to smile in spite of everything and anything.

 

No.

 

What I wish for them isn’t happiness; my wish for them is contentment, a sense of purpose, inspiration, assuredness, and the tools to navigate all emotions and feelings, the small ones and the big ones, with grace and confidence.

 

The measure of a life well lived isn’t how much we smile or the spring in our step; it is depth, how solidly we are tethered to knowing our worth and trusting our wisdom. It is our ability to ride the rollercoaster of life, always finding our way back to ourselves, no matter the chaos or disorientation.

 

Lately, it’s been a real struggle to find my way out of dark and heavy. I don’t really know what to do about it. I think I just want to soothe my being, remind myself to go ahead and revel in the delicious agony of the minor keys—it’s life—it’s feeling. There’s nothing like dancing to a perfect beat, but the songs that give me tingles down my spine aren’t the bouncy ones; they are the ones that moan out the complexity of the human condition.