Ali Walks Around

Everyone wants to live a happy life.

And for a long time, I believed that finding a happy life meant saying yes to everything.

I thought that the only way to have any fun was to be spontaneous.

Go!

Do!

Let go of all your boundaries!

Go out to the bars with strangers you just met at your hostel, even though you’re exhausted!

Talk poorly about someone else just because everyone else is doing it and you’ll have juicer conversation!

Interrupt that person just so everyone can hear the first thing that pops into your head!

Do crazy things!

Because the crazier the opportunity, the more “joyful” or “eventful” or “happy” your life is!

I used to believe those voices yelling in my head.

Until I got lost.

Until I didn’t feel embodied anymore.

I felt shame when I talked about other people, upset at myself for doing reckless things, and guilty for passing judgement to those I actually cared about.

All because I got to feel “happier” for that brief moment.

I felt like I was a robot doing whatever others told me to do, hoping that some day I’d find the “happiest” life along the way.

If only someone had told me long ago that a “happy” life is not same thing as a joyful life.

Happiness affects the sympathetic nervous system, the nerves that are impacted by instinct, our fight or flight reactions.

Joy, however, comes from the parasympathetic nervous system, which we reach when all threats have gone away.

When chasing happiness, we are never relaxed, calm, or content.

But when intentionally cultivating joy, we are finally relaxed, calm, and content.

But how does one let go of threats when our everyday lives are full of them?

When a person honks their horn at us? When we’re struggling to pay off debt? When we can’t find food to put on the table for our children?

We are designed to feel threatened, because that is how we survived.

We learned to run from lions chasing us.

But how do we experience joy when we know these threats still exist?

Maybe to put these threats out of sight, we have to look them in the eyes.

Happiness is when, while you feel brief pleasure, you still see another threat in the room with you, threatening to take your pleasure away.

Joy, however, is the state of mind when one has learned to live with these threats by grasping onto them and putting them in another room.

Even though the lion chasing you has gone, you must still chase the lion out of your mind.

Of course, threats will always come up in our lives, but one has simply learned to clear out the worries that are not actual threats in the moment.

In fact, most of the worries that come into our bodies end up not becoming true; apparently more than 90% of them.

Maybe we should think of living things as joyful creatures living with temporary pains, rather than tragic creatures chasing for happiness.

Even if it means you may be less “happy” in the moment, choosing the calmer, less stressful opportunity leads to more sustained joy anyways.

Maybe we need to say no to going out clubbing when we know we need rest.

Maybe we need to have an awkward moment in the conversation to not add on to the gossip.

Maybe we need to be patient for our turn to talk around the dinner table when everyone else is interrupting each other (the people who care for you will ask you questions in the first place, and also wait for your response).

Maybe we shouldn’t do the things that are going to make us happy today, but do the things that will make us happy tomorrow.

Maybe we shouldn’t react to what’s in front of us, but respond based on what was true yesterday, what is true now, and what will be true tomorrow, in a month, and even in ten years.

So stay with yourself.

Hold your boundaries.

You don’t have to lose yourself to find satisfaction.

And you’ll know when joy is trying to talk to you, because she never raises her voice.

She never shames.

She never judges.

She never uses exclamation points.