How to be happy
On where self-love comes from
Recently, a friend asked me, “You seem like you’re always happy. How do you do it?”
Which caught me off guard. Not that I don’t think about that question all the time. I do. I optimize a lot of my life around being happy. But because there is so much literature on it. Because philosophers time memorial have been writing about happiness and how to attain it. Because every day a new list of X things to do to be happy comes out and I read all of them. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said?
But I thought about it a little more.
From what I’ve read, the prevailing narrative is that we are all, ultimately, responsible for our own happiness. At the end of the day, we are the only ones capable of making ourselves happy. Of course. And the way we do that is that we must first love ourselves. Simple.
Love yourself—and your life will fall into place. Love yourself—and you’ll find that love, the right kind of love, will find you. Love yourself—and you’ll have all the things you could ever want. Success, respect, friends, love...
Will your self-love to blossom from within you. From nothing within you, if that’s what it takes.
But that’s not how it happened for me.
Maybe that’s not how it happened for you either…?
Maybe… instead, what happened was that every time your parents insisted on picking you up from the train station three blocks from your house, they taught you that you deserved to feel safe? And every time you did maddening teenage things like run up $200 long distance phone bills while on vacation in China and they did not yell at you but rather sat you down to a mature, adult conversation, they taught you it was okay to forgive yourself? (After a period of remorse, first, of course.)
And maybe, every time a teacher told you “Good job,” a potential employer decided to take a chance on you, or a mentor insisted they’d love to make an introduction for you to someone in their network, they were watering the seed of thought that perhaps, you have potential.
Maybe, you deserve to be here.
Every compliment from strangers and classmates and friends alike, every mutual crush. Every thoughtfully picked out gift, every “I was just walking home and thought I’d give you a call just because.”
Maybe they all added up.
Maybe it’s all of those big and tiny ways people have loved and noticed and believed in you that are the embryonic source of your happiness. Maybe happiness, at the foundational layer, is made up of other people.
Which means that to find it, you can’t look within yourself—at least not at first. And what you need to do instead is merely notice, remember—enshrine—all of those big and tiny moments. Of kindness, of admiration, of encouragement. Those many thousands, and thousands, and thousands of tiny treasures.
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