We limit ourselves to some rigid life.
source: tatiana vitas
One of the first weekends after we moved, I sat at the beach watching my kids play in the water. Eighty degrees. Sun out with a strong UV. I didn’t lean back in my chair with a piña colada and think, ugh, this is the life.
Instead, I asked myself: am I happy?
It was a strange thought because who wouldn’t be smiling? I traded snow shovels for beach toys, and I could do this any day of the week. But that tiny doubt, that passing check on my own life, sucked me right out of the moment I was supposed to be having.
I’ve thought about that interruption a lot since. Mostly because for six, almost seven years, I’ve been answering the same question for other people.
When I left New York for a state with beach weather in December, my family didn’t understand what the hell I was doing. Why would you go there? What are you even going to do down there? I remember when we used to visit grandpa down there. There was nothing to do down there.
For New Yorkers, anything beneath the state becomes down there. Rednecks and trailer parks. Small towns. Old retirees. Bad schools. Tighter job market, less income, low opportunity. I can keep going.
Rednecks and trailer parks. Small towns. Old retirees. Bad schools. Tighter job market, less income, low opportunity. I can keep going.
Of course you can find all that in the south. You can find it in New York too. Every state has pockets of neighborhoods that fluctuate by income and quality of life.
But I’m not here to criticize where anyone chooses to live. I’m here because of how I live now. I open my windows to palm trees and a warm breeze. I can be outside almost any day of the year. I can go night swimming. I don’t shovel snow or pack away summer clothes when September rolls around. Good weather constitutes happiness for me.
To my family, that’s depressing. It’s slower. More intentional. Way more greenery. And the debate never ends.
“Don’t you miss working?” I’ve been out of work for a measly four years.
“You’re home so much with the kids.” We go outside every day.
“You’re living a vacation life. It’s not real.” So sitting inside four walls under LEDs from 9 to 5 makes life real?
“You’re so creative. Don’t you want a job to make money and do something with that?” I’ve always enjoyed working and hustling for myself. My family knows this.
When they visit, it’s enjoyable the first three days because it’s a vacation for them. By day four, I see them getting anxious on my couch, sweating, making work calls, dying to get back to the traffic back home. The best part is when it’s sunny for the first half of their trip, then a little rain shower puts a damper on their time. They don’t know what to do down here other than lie in the sun.
But they know exactly what to do back home. Wake up five days a week to do the same job for eight hours, sit in traffic for two or three more. Then comes the weekend, and the big event is an espresso martini to wind down from the ‘stressful workweek’ they just had. For them, the rat race equals productivity, productivity equals money, and money equals happiness.
I know where they’re coming from because I used to run on that speed. Back in Queens, it felt like I was constantly keeping track of things. How much money I made. My goals. My body. My skincare. My whole life, like it was a spreadsheet.
I was limiting myself to some rigid lifestyle.
Eat this so you look like this. Wear this so you stay trendy. Go to this gym to get into this circle. Start your day at 5am because that’s what all the successful people do. Work five days a week so you can have two days off to drink yourself to sleep because God forbid you choose to walk through a nature trail on a Sunday afternoon after such a busy work week.
It was a collection of things I felt I was supposed to do to stay happy. I wasn’t tracking anything wholesome. It all derived from vanity.
So I moved, and I stopped being able to picture living there again. Visiting, for sure. I still have my low-key restaurants and cafes. I can’t knock the city I grew up in. But to physically picture myself back on the 7 train, running on that hamster wheel 365 straight isn’t my definition of happiness anymore.
I could say I moved to a place now where the scoreboard is easier to win, but it’s still a scoreboard. And I caught myself on that beach doing the same thing I did in Queens, just with better weather. Am I happy? The problem isn’t measurement, it’s the timing of the question. Asking “Am I happy?” mid-moment is the interruption.
Happiness is more like a wave. It comes over you without a second thought afterward.
Apparently there’s a study (Mauss et al., 2011, Emotion) that’s a close cousin for this. In 2011, psychologist Iris Mauss had a group of women read an article about how important happiness is, then showed everyone the same happy film clip. The women who’d just been told happiness matters came out of it less happy than the ones who hadn’t. It was the same movie with the same ending. The only difference was the pressure to enjoy it.
Last week my youngest dumped a handful of wet sand on my foot and laughed like he’d gotten away with something. Nothing popped into my mind. I didn’t ask myself anything. I was too busy laughing, chasing him off before he did it again.
