Brilliant … But Bouncy

I Was Driven By the Desire to Be Happy.

I went to see the movie, Inside Out. While it is billed as a movie for children, adults will have far more appreciation for its message and especially its subtleties. My kids didn’t much care about it. But after I saw it, I spent hours reflecting.

Looking back on my life now, knowing myself as I finally do, it’s easy to see what drove me as a youngster. I was driven by the desire to be happy.

ALL. The. Time.

I am not generally ecstatic. I’m rarely truly unhappy, either. I was born in sort of a melancholy state. I don’t know if it was nature or nurture. And now, quite honestly, it doesn’t matter why I was the way I was.

Because I’m still that way.

And until Shane was born – and came out of the womb also in a melancholy state – I thought there was something wrong with me.

So I decided at a very young age to change, and to be happy.

ALL. The. Time.

Unfortunately for me, I searched outside of myself for things to make me happy. I enjoyed swimming pools, riding bikes, and dogs. I lived in a northern climate, so swimming and bike riding wasn’t always an option – although I have very happy memories of both. Mostly, I just loved dogs. We didn’t get one until I was 12.

I also liked to read. After we got a dog, I took the dog for long walks and then went home and read books. I especially liked books about dogs – but the dog nearly always died at the end. Dogs don’t have long lives, even in books.

And I loved music. I especially liked sad, moaning pop songs about losing the love of my life. I had many loves, none of whom knew I existed, and I had a song for all of them. I rarely danced to music – just wallowed in it.

In my twenties, I drank enough alcohol trying to be “happy” that it put me into a decade-long depression. So I learned to look elsewhere.

Examining my quest for happiness more closely, I see now that what actually makes me happy is embracing the sadness I spent a lifetime trying to ignore.

In other words, I know now that it is okay to be myself.

I learned that when Shane was five, and I found him playing alone at recess. He was quiet, but he was perfectly content, playing in the dirt under an empty basketball hoop.

“Why don’t you go play with the other kids?” I asked him – for the second time that week.

“Why?” he said.

And it hit me like a brick in the head. Shane is happy. He’s just not jumping and running and laughing. He’s never run from his own sadness – just experienced it, and moved on. And that’s why he is, so far, content in his own skin.

I learned the same lesson six years later, when I watched Inside Out.

Maybe no one else will understand why it was such a powerful movie for me. But maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t matter if anyone else understands.