Chasin'

How many times have you been asked "How's life?"?
And what do you usually say?

The most common answer I've heard, especially in the UK, is 'not too bad'. And I've heard it from people who are actually having a pretty decent time of it. So is the answer cautious optimism? Are we scared of saying 'life's good!'? Do we not want to jinx it because we know how quickly it can all go down the toilet? Maybe we involve so many factors in our lives that any one of them going a bit wrong can throw our universe off keel. Maybe the answers have to do with an innate problem with honesty with others. Or maybe we aren't honest enough to ourselves about where our lives are going.

I think life can either be good or bad. In between is bad too. I use 'bad' in a very broad sense, though. The only thing that can justify life being 'bad' is going through situations beyond your control. If life's good, then it could be a happy mix of circumstance and you yourself doing something, proactively, to make life happier. Shouldn't that be one of the main aims of life anyway? You can't change the fact that you are here, now. Chasing contentment is too important to be a selfish act.

If there aren't circumstances in your life right now that make you say 'life's bad', and you find yourself answering 'life's ok', I'd say that's not too good.
Unhappy at work? - change it.
Unhappy in your relationship? - change it.
Feel like you have no friends? - change it.
Feel you are in a rut? - change it.

You can't change the fact of being here, now. It's changing the peripherals to best suit the core that makes the core function at its best. It's not an overnight process, but it's the most sensible one. There are the usual questions that are supposed to help in finding direction - where do you see yourself 5 years or 10 years 'down the line'? What are your goals and ambitions? But some of the more interesting ones I've come across are:

Make a list of things you would like to do before you die.
What would you like people to say or feel at your funeral? (Thanks, Omni, for reminding me of that one :-) )
Who are you? (Sophie's World - a friend I lent the book to about 2-3 months ago hasn't gotten beyond this line...on the third page. He said he spent 2 days thinking about it and it scared him!)
Where does your happiness lie?

It takes shitloads of guts to pursue a happiness which you may find does not lie on the expected path. Shitloads. Like my mum screams at me from time to time, in jest (mostly) - where are your priorities??!

This is not the end, it's the beginning of Happiness Theory.

:-)

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