I Am

I've become very happy with myself. Happy being myself.

I've grown to know myself rather well. I've been alone for long periods and listened to my brain chatter away. I've been in quite a few stressful situations and watched myself fluster. I quite like being Demented, I've realised. I do think of myself, my life, as being special. Not "special" in terms of being better than anyone else's, rather, "special" in terms of my own expectations.

Now for the philosophy.

I think now that happiness, contentment - these are things you carry with you. Relying or depending on external things or people to make you happy is a route to disappointment - even if you get that promotion or buy that new CD, there are always new external criteria to judge yourself on, new ways to find yourself lacking. The only thing we can hope to control, sometimes, is ourself and how we act in the situations life presents us with. I can't control whether you'll like me, or enjoy what I've written here, or whether it's going to be hazy tomorrow.

I think happiness comes from enjoying the moment, taking pleasure in each mug of beer, each conversation with a friend. Rushing is the antithesis of this attitude - rushing says that some imagined future pay off is worth cheapening the present. I can't control a lot of things. There are some things that just have to happen but perhaps I can control whether I let this affect my mood, my self image, my ability to laugh at myself and begin planning something else.

But still, in the great majority of times in life, I think a lack of attachment to things, a willingness to be happy regardless of the situation, is the base, the starting point. Ambitions and plans build on it, they don't replace it. I wonder how many of the "bad" things that happen to us are bad because we choose to look at them that way, that we have some expectation which reality doesn't match.

Although my handling on this way of looking at the world (an outlook, I notice, that sounds suspiciously like some version of Taoism) is fragile, it is how I am thinking about my future. I don't know what will happen although I have some goals, and I'm fairly relaxed about that, I'm quite confident things will work out well, one way or another.

I hope.