Our Baseline. . .

If someone told me that one day I would wake up and just be happy, I once wouldn’t have believed it. Then I woke up one morning happy. An extraordinary happiness that lasted for days and days, and the extraordinary thing about it was that nothing extraordinary happened that caused my happiness. I couldn’t pinpoint any reason for why I was happy. In fact, I still had deadlines to meet, and had nothing particularly exciting on my calendar. In fact, I was actually surprised that I was happy. Then I was surprised at being surprised I was happy! I realized my incredulity of being happy was because I had come to see happiness as a lofty goal that may or may not happen one day in the distant future, and which comes after much hard work. Happiness was something that happens when something good happens – like winning the lotto, falling in love, getting that promotion – and then happiness goes when the lotto money runs out, the love falls into normality and that promotion just meant more responsibility at work. I used to be like that. I was skeptical of those people who were happy all the time, who wrote blogs like this one declaring they found happiness, and walked around like they had no worries in the world. I used to be one of those people who would say, “There’s more to life than just being happy,” when I really wanted that happiness more than anything in life. So looking back – What was the key? Mindfulness for the long haul. Slowly, by being mindful of both my good days and those negative days and their causes, my baseline became less reactive and more neutral. That neutrality allowed me to pause before reacting, and with lots of practice (and failures) gave me more chances to pause and choose how I wanted to respond. I still have worldly problems and irritating moments throughout the day, and lose my mindfulness to stress and harshness. However, this experience has given me hope that the happiness we strive for is possible, and that baseline of reactivity can be turned to one of deep equanimity and an enduring freedom from suffering.