A Quantum Of Happiness

You can add to my happiness because I already made a choice to be happy, but you can’t take it away.

I used to worry that I might be, “pollyanna”, that I’m trying to see the good in everything. I see the good in a lot of things, but I don’t strain to see the good in everything. I’ve noticed lately, that there is a sort of quantum of happiness in my life, indivisible, always on, always there.

I know that there is a quantum of happiness in my life because I’ve seen people try to make me unhappy without success. I’ve seen people try to punish me for some slight, some omission, for not doing exactly what they wanted me to do.

Yet, I still manage to not take what they do personally. I still manage to see that if I can’t make them happy, they can’t make me unhappy. They can try, but I can still say to myself that when someone is trying to annoy me, that’s on them, not me. And if I did make a mistake, an error, I’ll apologize and do my best to correct it. But punishing me isn’t going to get the other person very far with me, much less any happiness. Punishment and happiness cannot coexist.

While I do see good in a lot of things in my life, I’m generally agnostic about everything. I don’t worry about outcomes as much as I used to. I tend to be detached from outcomes so that I’m not disappointed very often. I still have disappointments, but I don’t dwell on them, and I don’t worry about future disappointments.