Dear Diary,
I heard a story on the news a few weeks ago about how the United States was thinking about adding a Happiness Index to the monthly reports to gauge how well/not well the country is doing. My first reaction was that this is ridiculous and I must blog about it! Then I realized that the reasons it is ridiculous are a little too obvious, and when you examine the metrics that the index would be using the idea wasn’t all too crazy, but it actually made sense. After all employment, income, traffic, and marriage status does determine a degree of people’s happiness.
But is that all happiness is?
What really determines my happiness? Currently I love my job, I live in a city I love, I watch Netflix streaming when ever I want, and I will be an aunt next month. Over all I am quite happy. However there are certain things in my life looming over my head that constantly makes me unhappy. (Watch out, shit’s about to get real) The biggest of this is my singleness.
The truth is my current dating status has a lot to do with my happiness, and I think this is true for many singles. As a single lady I am taught by society to be happy with being alone, and for the most part I am. But when there is a boy in the picture my attitude changes dramatically. I am nicer to my students at school, traffic doesn’t bother me, everything is 12 times funnier, and I truly do feel as though I am looking through the world through rose-colored glasses.
I’ve never been in love; my longest relationship lasted only 6 months, so I know these feelings can fade fast. But if you are lucky enough to spend your life with a person you love and continue to love them, I imagine over time you adjust to the view through your tinted glasses of the world and it no longer looks so rosy.
With this in mind I am now forced to think about moments in life when I am my happiness. Getting my dream job, laughing at something stupid so hard that I begin to cry, and stepping off a plane to some place new and foreign. Then I realized that all these moments are fleeting. The job soon becomes stressful, the joke looses its humor, and I eventually long for my own bed. What once made me happy no longer does so.
After my dreams are realized I then begin setting my sights on something else. A promotion, a higher salary, or a new trip across the globe. It are these hopes and dreams that keep me going from day to day. Perhaps that is what happiness really is… the optimism to gain something greater than what we have.
I think our founding fathers had it right. I guess the pursuit of happiness is what defines happiness. If this is the case, then as a single lady I guess I’m happier than the average married person. I still have the hope and dream of bagging the “perfect man”. “What makes him perfect?” you might ask. I think the answer might be, “the fact that I don’t know.”
In my opinion the US should throw out the happiness index and replace it with an optimism index. What matters more, what we have or what we think we can have?
Hugs and kissed till next time!!
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