This morning I made coffee using a park picnic bench. As I waited for the water to boil, I looked up. Sunny blue sky, hinting at a warm spring day.
After sleeping almost nine hours last night, I noticed an inner quiet. Not the usual tumult of plans or other random thoughts that cross my mind during any day.
Instead, just calm and quiet as I felt the sun on my face and listened to the wind doing its thing poking leaves and watched swallows gliding and playing along the grass.
Life hummed into gear around me: edge-trimmers, commuters, the ring of children’s laughter in the distance. A beautiful landscape with a natural soundscape to match.
I started thinking about a recent phone call where I was asked if I am happy.
I had paused for a moment, unsure how to answer. Happy or unhappy – why does it have to be such a narrow choice; black or white, this or that?
Part of my hesitation stems from a past marriage to a self-proclaimed guru who often stated happiness is only ever a temporary point between unhappiness; that life is either a valley or a peak, nothing in between.
I must admit it took a few years for me to unpack that one before tempering it with my lived experience.
I have had moments of happiness that lasted as long as a week or as little as five minutes. Happiness has been a spike in internal peacefulness from calm to somewhere close to euphoria. For me, unhappiness is the reverse, a dive somewhere between peaceful and perturbed, sometimes dipping into rage or depression.
Eventually I figured out that chasing happiness is not the goal in life. What I do know is that my goal is a state of being known as ‘being peaceful’. Asking if I am happy implies a black and white answer: am I happy or unhappy? Peaceful does not fit into that black and white option.
Over decades of raising children, my favourite personal mantra became ‘choose peace’. Not an easy thing to do with a restless mind like mine or when dealing with the conundrums posed by child-raising. Choosing peace became the cornerstone of my emotional well-being. This meant I aligned my choices with my personal values each time I made a decision. Whatever choices I made in that moment in time, aligned with my need for peace.
In choosing peace rather than happiness, I became aware of how my thoughts interfered with how I felt, one of the biggest lessons I learned from the late great Louise L Hay.
Changing my thoughts, changes how I feel, which means I have learned to constantly choose peace. It is my primary tool for self-care and as a consequence, choosing peace has become my primary tool for maintaining, and optimising, my mental health.
My conclusion with my morning coffee? In a world where emotional choices are often painted in black and white, choosing peace over happiness is my way of sustaining the grey middle ground. Happiness reminds me of visitors: I am almost always pleased to see them, but I still enjoy my solace when they leave.
Who needs happiness, then?
On this warm Spring morning, I choose peace.
Christine Writer 