A Thing About Happiness
I was 22 the first time I had a crisis about aging. Not because I felt old obviously, but because I looked around at my life and realized I felt unfulfilled. And more alarmingly, that I felt afraid and even incapable of trying to change that.
I realized that I had become so afraid of failing, that I was becoming a person willing to sacrifice trying.
It had been a hard couple years at that point. I was still reeling from a series of abusive relationships, working dead end jobs that eroded at my sense of competency and self, the death of a close friend and ultimately dropping out of school because of my own inability to cope.
It was hard to shake to the feeling that new failures were lurking behind every hope I had. I felt it a haunting sense of inadequacy that I was unable to cultivate the kind of life I was supposed to want for myself.
On Christmas Eve of that year, I sat on the garage steps of my childhood home having a beer and chatting up with my brother. And never one to mince words, he looked me square in the eye and said, “Syd, what the fuck are you doing with your life?”
And it was in response to that prompting I knew — I was trying to learn how to be happy. Because as my father often reminds me — the problems you don’t fix just follow you. And I knew that any job or outside achievement I could have accomplished at that point wouldn’t matter — because I didn't know how to love or care for myself.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but these were my first radical acts of self care.
The next few years were some of the hardest — and happiest — of my life. I was broke often and scared of the uncertainty in my future — but it taught me to be unapologetic, because in the moment in my life I didn’t doubt I was doing the work on myself that I needed to be.
I learned through condescending and sympathetic conversations with strangers that it looked like I was failing. That experience taught me how little weight other people’s opinions carry when you trust in your own choices, because for the first time in my life I realized I felt capable of relying on myself.
And in this time I had spent with myself I realized that what had surpassed my fear of failing, was my fear that one day I would die feeling as though I had never risked living.
So I made a bucket list of everything that I wanted to do — self publish books of poetry, learn to paint, be in an art show, take burlesque classes, perform on stage, express myself honestly but kindly with everyone, drop-in on a skateboard, feel thankful for my life everyday, ridding my life of toxic relationship cycles, owning up to my faults, and taking actions to change them.
It was a ridiculous list, but it was filled with experiences that helped me appreciate the passion and joy I had for living — things that made me feel vibrant, engaged, expressive and alive.
Over the last few years I’ve knocked off all of them — although some of them will continue to be lifelong goals and the list will keep growing. Not all of them have gone great — I’ve puked from nerves on more than one occasion, I’ve put my trust in the wrong people and my books are filled with typos (¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ), but they helped me realize my happiness is worth trying for.
And they helped me realize that no one goal or life change can give you lasting happiness, because you and your life are ever evolving. It was the cumulation of making small choices every day over time, that reshaped the world I lived in, the interactions I had, and the attitudes I was surround with.
And I realized too the way these actions had changed me.
Setting goals for myself and actually accomplishing them helped me learn to trust myself. Being willing to look silly and fail at a new thing — it kept me humble and helped me feel brave for facing my fears. And acting with openness and honesty — it helped me find people who valued the way I wanted to interact and mutually supportive, liberating relationships.
I guess the point of sharing my story is this: I want you to know that if you are scared or unhappy or feeling lost — you are capable of changing it.
These changes don’t have to be so drastic or occur overnight — but you have to make them consistently and unapologetically. Because with every truth you share and choice you make you are capable of bringing yourself closer to becoming the kind of person you want to be.