the semi charmed kinda life

“Are you happy?” my friend asked me today as we were discussing various topics I could write about for my blog. “Yeah, I am hamdillah,” I replied immediately, not thinking twice about the answer. Raising her eyebrow at me she responded, ”Really? Happy or just settling?”

While in my heart I was quick to affirm my happiness to her, her question began to echo in my mind. My answer had not been phony or forced, yet her use of the word “settling” jarred me slightly and caused me to second guess myself. Was I settling? Am I truly happy?

In today’s world we are conditioned to believe that we can always have better. Living in a city like Dubai, the standards are not any different, as we live a fast paced life where it seems like someone is always ahead of you in the race. When I grow too comfortable in the status quo, I always find myself questioning if I’m doing enough with my life and if there’s something I can be doing better. Rarely do I reflect on where I am and say, “you know what? I’m doing damn well right now.”

So maybe that’s why I somewhat felt ashamed to admit I was happy. When asked if I was settling, I began to question whether my standards were actually too low. Could I have a better job? A better car? A better life? Maybe. But do I need it? Have we grown so cynical that we believe that happiness is always one step ahead of us like the proverbial carrot that drives the horse forward?

Or maybe we don’t want to admit out loud that we’re happy, for fear that if we put that fact out there that this elusive happiness that we’ve been chasing all our lives will be snatched from us in the blink of an eye. Being a big believer in jinx, I know that’s definitely a deep rooted fear of mine, but this fear seems to have evolved into something greater, as it now somewhat causes me to wonder whether I should even admit to myself that I’m happy. In the back of my mind there is now this paranoia that if I pause too long to bask in the glow of this happiness that I’ve attained that I will find myself falling behind in life’s race while others charge ahead never stopping once to breathe a sigh of relief when they hit each milestone.

But then I remember a quote I read years ago by Chicago Times columnist Mary Theresa Schmich, “don’t waste your time with jealousy—sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself.”

In essence, the only true and objective measure we have of ourselves or our happiness is our past and where we want to be in the future. If in this moment you are exactly where you want to be and you have grown from the person you were before then what more can you ask for? Happiness is not just a word on a poster that we hang on the wall, but can actually be something you’re missing in your life not because it’s not there but because you simply overlook it when you’re too focused on believing that you need to do more to earn it.

empty plates, empty hearts

When eating good food, I tend to rush through it. Often I find myself filling my mouth with another bite before I’ve even had the chance to swallow the last. I can’t help myself, when I taste something good I just want to eat it all.

But before I realize it, it’s all gone. Whether it’s a piece of rich chocolate cake or a delicious bowl of pasta, I always eat it so quickly that before my mind registers how savory it was I’m staring down at an empty plate. Disappointment always prevails, as we all know you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

When I think about it, it becomes clear that I do that with a lot of things. I always put a song I love on repeat till I can’t stand it anymore, visit a fabulous cafe till I’m sick of its menu, and spend every minute I can with that new someone special because I can’t get enough of their company.

And a lot of the time, that beginning spark of something special ends up fizzling, because when lighting a fire, you have to blow gently. If you blow too hard you just end up putting the fire straight out and are back to sitting alone in the cold.

When we meet someone new that interests us, our immediate reaction becomes that we want to see them constantly. We sneak out of the office for quick lunches with this Mr. X and push aside our regular routine to accommodate more dinners and coffees. We find ourselves writing things down in our agendas in pencil and not pen, because you never know when something might spring up and we’ll get another chance to spend a few more hours with Mr. X.

But soon you find that the interest fades, from one side or the other. Your phone either starts to ring too much for your liking or stops ringing at all, because the interest that was there was wiped clean in such a short time span. If you eat all the cookie dough before it goes in the oven, you never really get the chance to find out how good the cookies could have tasted. Sometimes it pays off more to wait patiently, pace yourself, and then you’ll get to settle down comfortably with a plate of warm biscuits.

Cheesy metaphors aside, I may sound like I’m advocating playing games or hard to get, but I’m not really. The only thing I’m pushing is the idea that you may not want to be that song that somebody grows sick of. Don’t put yourself on repeat.

They didn’t lie when they said you can’t have too much of a good thing. You literally can’t—if you’re not careful, it disappears before you know it.

one important agreement

While I am not a woman who feeds her soul through talk shows, I have to say that sometimes on an idle Friday afternoon I do find myself in the company of an Oprah or Dr. Phil rerun. While most of the time the shows are filled with topics that barely tickle my interest, sometimes these TV sages present something that truly strikes a chord with me.

And sometimes it’s only a few words.

That happened with Oprah years ago, when in her book club segment she was discussing a book by Mexican writer Don Miguel Ruiz called The Four Agreements. The book focuses on four agreements you make with yourself to alleviate the negative energy that weighs down your life in order to attain the happiness you’ve been seeking. While I’m generally skeptical of the self-help genre, one of these agreements mentioned on the show forever changed the way I think.

Agreement Number Two: Don’t take anything personally.

So often those words had been said to me before, but Ruiz’s explanation was simply so pragmatic that I couldn’t help but feel silly for burdening myself with indignation throughout my whole life. His argument was that people view the world through their own sets of filters, and so what someone says to you is generally intended in a completely different way than you interpret it due to the difference in your filters. It is rare that you ever know the full context of someone’s thoughts, and so the series of triggers that go through their mind and lead to certain comments is unknown to you. For this reason, you can never be sure of what anyone really means. As we have been conditioned into a cynical state by the world we live in, we hardly ever give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they honestly meant no harm.

And so we bring the harm upon ourselves, turning the comment over and over again in our minds trying to create hidden meanings and agendas that were probably never even there to begin with. We analyze tone and body language, without ever thinking to stop for one second to just take comment at face value. In the end, we succeed in doing to ourselves exactly what we thought the other person intended—hurting ourselves.

If you never take things personally, you begin to realize how much easier life becomes. You free yourself of the constant self-doubt that envelops when you believe that others are scrutinizing your every move. Truth is, most people have enough of their own problems to even care enough about your flaws to criticize them.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to constructive critique, it simply means that if someone actually does mean to insult you, let them make more of an effort to actually do it. Stop doing their work for them.

white noise

My cousin likes to sleep with the ceiling fan on. She keeps it on not for its cooling ability but to maintain a certain degree of white noise at night. Otherwise, she claims, she cannot fall asleep.

While sharing a bedroom with her, I would lie awake at night watching the fan spin endlessly and will myself to go to sleep. Tossing and turning, I could not comprehend how someone could need noise to feel at ease, while I could barely block it out.

After a few nights with the fan on, I stopped hearing it. The gentle murmur evolved from something foreign to my ears to something almost comforting. The fan simply became part of the background like the TV we turn on when we’re doing housework, or the radio in the car when we drive to the office. It wasn’t so much that we want to watch or listen, but instead we simply want something to drown out the deafening silence.

It is rare in this day and age that we are left alone with ourselves in complete and utter silence. At work we are surrounded by people, at home we have a plethora of technology to distract us, and even when we go jogging our i-Pod is our constant companion. Only in the few moments when we fall asleep at night are we encompassed by the flurry of thoughts that run through our mind, and even then we are often counting sheep or the turns of a fan. The truth is, we all claim to want nothing more than “peace and quiet” but we actually work so hard to ensure that we never have it.

What exactly are we trying to escape in the silence? Our own thoughts?

My friend recently told me that on her latest trip she had a 3 hour layover which she decided to use as an opportunity to write in the journal she had been neglecting. Deciding to write without her music on, she found herself pouring out thoughts that had no idea even existed in her mind. What she was writing when her surroundings were completely cleared of any white noise was almost shocking to her, as these were all the thoughts she had worked so hard to deny.

And I’m sure she’s not the only one. When I’m left alone in a darkened room unable to fall asleep, the thoughts I try not to think creep up from my subconscious to take a prominent place in the forefront of my mind. Often the questions that arise in those moments of fleeting silence I have no answers to, and the uncertainty that leaves me with almost frightens me.

Is white noise the bandaid we place over our deepest fears in the hope that if we change the dressing enough we may never actually have to deal with our darkest thoughts? Are we afraid of what we might actually think if we leave ourselves alone in the silence?