My Kind of Happiness

A friend once said to me that I'm not actually bitter, but I have this tendency to stick around bitter things, dwelling on the darker side of emotion.

Well, for a moment then I considered the possibility of what my friend said. 

I'm the kind of person who enjoy my quiet time alone reading book (with an emphasize at the 'alone' part). While working at the office I use a headphone all the time to block the sound of other people and basically everything around me, unless those that I want to hear. I love rainy days. I even go as far as believing that I have this emotional attachment to rainy days. When other people turn to gloomy mood under cloudy sky, I'd quietly smile, feeling completely content and at peace.  I spend my two hours of commuting back home everyday listening to Jia Peng Fang or Yiruma. 

I sometimes listen to upbeat and happy songs, but it's always those slow beat and rather melancholy tunes that is able to make me smile and sigh with contentment at the end of the day. And most important is, I'm completely happy with those melancholy moments.

So what is it with me? Am I not being truly happy?

I've asked myself this question anyway, and honestly, I've even drafted a list in my head, consisted of things to do to get closer to bright lights and cheerful things.

But once again Susan Cain's post comforts me.

In her blog posts What Kind of Happy Are You?  Susan Cain talked about the happiness of melancholy. It's the kind of happiness you find in things that are not supposed to make you feeling joyful, like the sight and sound of rain, cloudy sky, pentatonic notes, minor key, or melancholic songs.

I didn't even know it exists before. To some people it might be difficult to comprehend, as none of those things I mentioned before normally trigger the happy feeling. But I can absolutely relate to what Cain said. If I'm not being happy all this time, why do I smile every time I get off the bus after the two hours commuting, injected through and through with the melancholy tunes of Yiruma or the piercing sound of erhu in Jia Peng Fang's music? How would I feel the unmistakable comfort silently wrap around me at the first drop of rain, if I'm not being happy?  I wouldn't be able to smile, standing under the umbrella in the pouring rain if I'm not happy. But how is that?

Ms. Cain's words sums up everything perfectly. 

"But the very communion of this act is happy-making – if you define happiness broadly enough"

After reading Susan Cain I realized that I'm not crazy, or bitter, or suicidal, in any way. I'm just completely contented with my own kind of happiness :)

happiness is a choice?

It's funny how there are things that you've heard so many times and you thought you know what it means, but the fact is that you never really absorb what it means until it happens to you.


The most recent one happened to me was about how happiness is a choice. Happiness is your choice. You choose whether you're going to be happy, or miserable, regardless the circumstances. I've heard about it so many times. And though it never really clear to me why and how, I've accepted it as the truth. I don't know how it would felt but I've accepted it as the way things should work.

And I have to say that I'm thankful to be able to actually experience the feeling. 


I've been under the weather for about a week, having bad cough and fever that goes up and down. Yesterday it got really bad; my body was felt like a shipwreck, my head was spinning, the cough was getting worse and it caused me headache. All I wanted to do was sleep on my bed. At home. But there I was at the office, facing the computer screen, doing my works. I wore a thick jacket with a hood, and carried a tumbler containing hot tea everywhere I go. Every now and then I put my head on my desk and closed my eyes, not really sleeping, just trying to ease myself.


What surprised me was that despite everything, I was feeling happy. I found myself dancing on my seat while typing words and numbers into the screen. I looked at the sky outside and it was black, a sign that heavy rain would come down. And if you know the traffic in Jakarta, you'd know that that shouldn't be a good sign. But I was feeling okay. I danced with the body that felt like a shipwreck, I sang with a cracked voice, with a prospect of having to spend no less than 2.5 hours in the road just to get home. 


That's when it hit me, that this is probably what it means when they said that happiness is a choice. 


I could choose to be unhappy that day. I had all the reasons I need to be unhappy for the rest of the day. I don't think I'd consciously made a decision to be happy but perhaps somehow I did. Because I couldn't see anything wrong with the day and I couldn't think of any other reasons why I shouldn't be happy. 


It's a choice you could choose. It's what you choose to feel, regardless the circumstances.


Being a person who carries clouds above her head, I'm sure that choosing to be happy is not an easy thing to do. It requires skill, and skill requires practice. But at least I now know what it really means, and I think that should be a good start :)