Happy daze

            Apparently, studies have said that fifty percent of our core happiness is genetic, ten percent is circumstances and forty percent is unaccounted for. Forty percent! That's a whole lot of misguided and misunderstood happiness if you don't know where to look for it. And, about that fifty percent being genetic...I assumed this was an issue anyway. Genetic unhappiness has been the very thing that I've been fighting since I was a young teen. I've lived in fear of that awful disease called depression from ever taking precedence of my life for years. Sadly, both my mother and grandmother have suffered from manic depression for most of their lives and both have been hospitalized more than once because of it. When my mother was diagnosed with the disease I was just thirteen and I vowed then and there that this would never be me. I was not going to live the life my mother and grandmother struggled through for too many years. I was not going to let myself become another statistic, pumping myself with medication just so that I could put a smile on my face everyday. Instead, I decided that I was going to pursue my happiness to the ends of the earth if I had to. And, that flimsy ten percent due to circumstances in life...this can't really be helped because most circumstances happen TO you, whether you like it or not. However, it's how you deal with those fleeting good and bad moments that are given to you that can make your life ten percent better or ten percent worse. I believe, that those decisions we make in our circumstances can bleed into that unknown forty percent, and there is where we might just find the very happiness that we all struggle to possess.           

            The other day, during a long and dull day at work, I was doing some meaningless task in a corner somewhere, daydreaming, like always, when my friend Andrew appeared beside me chomping on a bowl full of chopped salad. At the time I was contemplating the near future and a decision I've been weighing the pros and cons to for quite a while. As he stabbed a fork full of his salad and shoveled it into his mouth he said something along the lines of what he believes could quite possibly be the key to happiness. It was a really random statement, as though we had started a conversation earlier and were just now picking up where we had left off. He just seemed to pull the message out of thin air. I don't know what made him say it, if I was looking completely bored out of my mind, or little suicidal in that moment...I don't know, but it was something that went more or less like this: to be truly happy in life you would have to constantly do two things...be physically active as much as possible, and keep changing. Whether it's good change or even bad change, this is the secret ingredient that will make you feel most alive and therefore, happy. It was a very profound and unexpected statement, coming from Andrew, a young twenty-something who spends most of his days schlepping through long days at work to pay for his few night courses at a community college. Then spends his free time partying like a rock star, like most people who come to New York City at that age, soon regretting it the next day when they have to drag themselves back to work again. People assume Andrew is from California because of his laidback personality and low and slow way of talking, but when you actually have a conversation with Andrew, he is not as laid back as everyone thinks. In fact, he seems on the verge of exploding half of the time I see him at work. So hearing this deep and Zen-like string of words come from his mouth, especially while he was crunching noisily and spitting pieces of his chopped salad as he spoke, felt meaningful and something I very much needed to hear in that moment. For what felt like a good ten minutes, I just stood there, contemplating his epiphany, until I realized, what he said might actually be true. It made complete sense. I've felt those surges of happiness, excitement and complete awareness to every present detail in those moments in life, the good moments and the bad. The day I first fell in love felt like being born again, the day I lost that love felt like the start of another life, the tearful bus ride I took when I moved to New York, my first apartment, first paycheck, first flight on a plane, first rollercoaster ride, first swim, seeing a piece of art come to life, seeing birth, seeing death, learning to drive, learning to crash, my first award, my first F, all of these things, and many, many others, good and bad. They were moments that woke me up, opened my eyes and I felt most like a living, breathing human being. I was alive! Those were the moments I remember, moments of change. The long days I spent in overtime at work doing the same mundane thing or the times I spent sitting on the couch watching television all day. I don't remember those days, because I was bored, I was static and I was, therefore...unhappy.

            This year I've had so many new and different experiences happen because of my mission to live as fully as possible, as though this were the last year of my life. And because of that I've never felt more alive and truly happy in one consecutive, long stretch of time. I've been more physically active than I've ever been before, I've traveled more than I have in the last six years of my life and these last few months have been one change after another and I'm addicted. I'm addicted to the happiness that it has brought me and the will to pursue my dreams have only gotten stronger and more vividly placed before me.

            A few weeks ago I got my new lease agreement for the apartment I've been living in for nearly two years. Before I got the lease I told myself that if the rent went up, I would leave the apartment at the end of its term in February and look for something cheaper or sublet for the last few months of my thirty-second year. I would let go of place I've called home and continue what I started to do six months ago and continue to follow my dreams. If the rent stayed the same, then I would stay where I was and life as I've known it would continue as it were. I'd go on pinching my pennies the same way that I've been doing for the last two years and do the best I could with finishing as much of my bucket list as possible.

            Well, the rent went up, and I had to really think about what I was doing. When Andrew came to me with those random words of wisdom, he was like an oracle that had happened to appear at the exact moment I needed to be reminded of this very important piece of information. The question that I was contemplating just moments ago, suddenly came to me with such certainty that my final decision was made before Andrew took his final fork full of chopped salad. I was moving on and letting go. Before the end of that week, my decision was signed, sealed and delivered, and there was no turning back. Where I end up in March, I have no idea. But even if it means fighting Gizmo for the blanket in the back seat of my little Nissan Sentra for a month, I'm still excited by the change and all of the possibilities that lay ahead of me now.