TRAUMA DAYS: CHARLIE*

“I’LL BE HAPPY WHEN”

There isn’t one human I have ever personally known who hasn’t conditioned their present state on being OK, acceptable, enough without the caveat of providing they get better (at something, or being something, or having something) in the not-too-distant future.

New Year is an absolute ‘wotsit’ for this. We’re over 2 weeks in. In seven days, my grandmother turns 100 years old. Two days ago, I lost one of the most important people to touch my world to cancer.

Time ticks. If we think as things as being linear, one thing leading to the next, and if we look forward, and if we always hope for better times for us and those we care about, that all makes sense, right? We assume so. (But I’ve actually decided to buck that). I question as to whether this is actually healthy or realistic.

This thinking of “I’ll be happen when [blah blah]  happens" (or, indeed, "when I am more [blah blah]" or "when I am less [blah blah] ") is why we are unhappy in the world.

(PS This is Charlie. My Cocker Spaniel who I grew up with. If we think of life a a line of existence, he is way way 'gone'. But he is still very prominent in how I think. So he's not. Charlie is very much alive in my neurons and my rapport with him still has relevance.)

So should I give up on the things he taught me about me, because he has expired? Or do I use what I can from my time with him? I think we all know the answer to that. What actually matters? The fact that in physical time terms, he is "not here" or the reality that in meaning, he still really blooming well is? 

We hear "I'll be happy when..." a lot in Emergency Response and the military, but policing especially. I cannot count the number of colleagues who have a count-down app on their phone which tells them how many days (or even hours) ‘til their pension. At first glance it’s novel and quirky and tongue-in-cheek funny. But is it? Really? It is really OK to make light of (and even honourable of) waiting and deferring and delaying our sense of being ok UNTIL a certain time ticks in, a label is given, a piece of administration kicks in. Can an administrative process make us automatically clued-up for happiness? I don’t think so.

And it’s not just about retirement or a job change. Or a relationship change. Or a location change. Or a waist size change. Or a car change. Or tech’ change. Or income change. Even if we are talking about being different or changing for the benefit of a higher purpose, or others… it’s still the same: an expectation that only after change or ‘progress’ or ‘this’ or ‘that’ that things will be OK. That we will be OK.  

In our aspiration to be better and ‘do better’ by other people, what we are actually saying is: we are not OK. We need to be unhappy, discontent. Without realising it, by waiting and deferring that which is important to is, we commit ourselves to a life of subtle and banal self-loathing and ingratitude, that creeps into who we are and how we behave with others. It’s like we very quietly and discretely give up on ourselves (and hope that no one notices). We are so busy striving to be something other than us, we lose sight of what we already have to give to people. So we may even stop giving it. Because we are trying to be better than what we are.

Even though we want to be happy, it’s like we are saying that we need some other secret ingredient , some other skill, some other discipline, to be able to be fully happy, to give more and to do well and to thrive. We are actually saying to ourselves, deep down, something is missing. And the something isn’t in us, it’s ‘out there’. Something we don’t have hold of. By instructing ourselves to say “do better”, we are actually telling our mind, brain, nervous system, friends, loved ones and those who (already) admire us that essentially, the reality is that, right now, we are actually not enough. We are not great. We are deficient. We lack. We don’t have what is important. Life (as it is) is not right. We should not be happy with it. We should be unsettled, unhappy.

And then we wonder why we’re unhappy.

We can’t see that it’s us that’s telling us that we are not OK, and not enough to give as we are – or, heavens forbid- just to BE as we are. We can’t see it’s our own voice.

So, will look to anyone or anything to blame.

“The job”. “The system”. “Politics”. “The public”. “The economy”. Or- really fricking irritatingly; “The Powers That Be”. Or: Her next door. My ex. The neighbour. My parents. My children. Their children. The cat. Even worse; “It’s like everything”. [I mean, WTAF? How can we blame “everything” for a whinge about what we don’t’ like about something. I mean, that’s a pretty catch-all phrase, right there. “Everything”]. Anyway. We’d do anything to detract from the sense that it might just be little ol’ us that actually is the secret as to whether things are OK or not.

We can so easily defer to a plethora of reasons and excuses to say life isn’t perfect. We say that we need to wait or do stuff for this to change. That the happiness and satisfaction will come at another time in the future. (A future that can only ever be imagined).

How about we just jack this in?

We have no blooming idea what is going to happen, so why put a condition on ourselves that we can only be happy if it happens to turn out in a certain way? We might have even changed by then. We’ll never even really realise we’ve got there, because actually, all our life is just a collection of today’s and ‘right nows’.

So. I say: let’s not think about getting what we want for then, and think about what is a lot more real and honest and raw: what is “OK” right now, today. What is in front of our faces is all that really exists, so what is good about it and us -and how can we share it?

That’s all we have. But it’s really huge.