Owning Your Happiness

It would seem that I’m determined to beat the topic of happiness to death. I have no idea why it’s been on my mind lately, especially considering the fact that if I were a bar graph I’d pretty much ride the middle without much variation. In other words, I’m pretty even tempered most of the time. But my kids, however, are not.


They bounce worse than the stock market these days. One minute my son is all smiles and bear hugs, the next minute he’s trying to push me across the kitchen floor. He’s only nine and I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold my ground for much longer because he’s stocky and strong and, thanks to wrestling, he’s pretty good at pushing people around. I’m going to have to give up wearing socks in the kitchen—better traction.

My daughter cried for a solid hour and a half after I got home and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what upset her. But with her it’s really anyone’s guess. She’s been so ticked off that she’s threatened to cut her own hair when I didn’t make it look right. According to her, I’m bound and determined to make her look stupid and then send her off to school to be humiliated all because I picked the wrong color hair bow. Bear in mind that she’s five. The teen years are going to kill me.

My eldest is like a stealth missile. You don’t hear his bad mood coming until it’s hit you in the head and you’re lying on the floor wondering what happened. Generally it starts something like this. My children will be sitting at the kitchen table doing various activities when one of the littler ones will burst out crying. I’ll investigate to find that something important (and generally sugary) has disappeared when it was sitting “right there.” My eldest will look over at his wronged brother or sister with an angelic face and offer to help look for the piece of candy while he’s chewing on it. When he’s frustrated he loves spreading the pain. He’s sneaky and his siblings don’t have enough street sense to catch him.

So what’s all this have to do with happiness you ask? Everything. The children zig-zag between bliss and utter depression, hitting every point in between, as they react to everything that they come in contact with. If I make chicken and potatoes for dinner then it’s a really “bad night” for my daughter and a “good night” for my sons. If I break out the rare macaroni dish then my daughter’s blissfully happy and my boys threaten to walk all the way to Wendy’s so they can get real food. If a teacher yells at the class then my kids decide that school sucks and they want to be home schooled—as if that would ever happen! They assume that the situation is either good or bad and that their reaction is the logical one. But it takes a few years to learn that reaction is a choice and that you can choose to be happy.

It takes even more years to own your own happiness. I’m still not there everyday but I’m working on it. It’s like a mantra that I have to repeat until I believe, “only I can make me happy.” But it’s really true. It’s not just kids that play the “I’ll be happy when” game. I’ve done it—lots. I’ll be happy when I lose thirty pounds. I’ll be happy when I’m married. I’ll be happy once I have kids. I’ve said all those things. What a joke! My kids make me crazy, marriage is hard, and I’m not really willing to eat rabbit food so that I can look cute in skinny jeans. So I had to learn to be happy in my own skin regardless of what’s going on around me. It makes total sense when you think about it. We don’t get any guarantees in life—it’s chaotic and we have no control over anyone else. But we do have control over ourselves and that includes our happiness. I just hope my kids figure it out sooner rather than later—moody Mondays are exhausting!