A Lost Map to Happiness



"I was unexpectedly derailed when I thought I was on the right road to my happiness
and now I need to find how to get to an entierly different sort of happiness.
I can't stay where I am - and I need to find all of the pieces of me.
The real pieces, not the patchwork I have now - made out of other peoples junk, given like precious gifts, but actuallyball about them and nothing about me .

I think that's I why I have become focused on finding my happiness.
I may not have an exact route map to get there,
but,
a distant waving flag is something to aim for."


I have thought that I need to find my own hapiness, it has been demanding my attention for a while,  but as I find time to examine it I now wonder if even that may be a falsehood?

There is a temptation to think that a rapid push towards a distant goal may be an honorable ambition,  but I am drawn to wondering, why can I not just be happy now?


I have been remaking myself, and each piece of the new me is difficult to assemble and sometimes the temptation is to shove in something that looks like it would work, just so I can move on, is huge. To plaster over the gaps and apply a smear of hope. To just stick together what I have. It may or may not hold, but it would give me the chance to be somewhere else. To move on.

Do I really need to be somewhere else though?

I feel time pressing on me to "remake myself better" and to do it Right Now !After all I am getting older and have already spent so much time focussed on other peoples needs disguised as my own. But this urge may not benefit me.The need to be "better" than this, more perfect, made of polished things and all precious bits newly minted (and made quickly), is not necessarily in my best interests. It is some past worm of a voice in my head whose silence would be altogether more helpful than its advice.

When I use the old pieces of me, I find sometimes they are true and precious and well made, sure, sometimes there is a rot about them and they have parts to them, little Trojan worms that are not part of me at all. It is odd where they turn up. Often in jealous moments and in envy. In decisions about what I am capable of and what would benefit me. But these false things are not so good at hiding as they used to be, and often my mood (my subconscious) loudly signals their appearance so that I can consciously look for them.

I am also increasingly unsure if I wont really do quite well as I am, mostly.

I feel I have worked hard this year to shift my entire foundation to another place, and torn through so much information, and exposed so much of my own experience that It seems like there couldn't have been time for other parts of my life. Yet there is and I find myself doing more and more that makes me happy, perhaps because I do less that makes me sad and frustrated. I am increasingly not feeling that there is such a need a need to be so focused on taking myself to the workshop everyday inspecting myself and finding new bits that need fixing.

I am not complacent  but I expect everybody lives with a few worms of various sorts, and whilst I am o.k. to keep a weather eye out for them, and notice them when they appear, I am not dedicating the rest of my life, at this rate of work, to cleansing myself of them. I think that there is still a lot of work to do, but I am tired of it and the focus it requires, and as in many pieces of work, too much at once means mistakes creep in. My life is largely for other things and this change no longer needs to dominate everything anymore I think.

So instead of using happiness as a future goal I may reverse that thinking and use it as my guide. If I am happy then I am going the right way, and if I am not - that is the time to take stock, see where I am straying, and see if I have stumbled on another nest of worms.

I am not so foolish as to think that I should be a euphoric grinning fool for the entirety of my life. But I do think happiness and contentment should be closer and more constant companions in my travels not distant goals to be rushed towards.