Happiness and winter.

I believe in happiness, I really do. I believe in it in the form of very short instances where everything is just right, and you realize it’s just right, which lets you live in it; lets you be the happiness. I very much believe that you do in fact become happiness when happiness is bestowed upon you. It’s such an overwhelming feeling, it seems as if there is no other feeling to be felt at that moment; so you just become happiness.

I don’t believe in happiness in the life-sense. I don’t think there is any such thing as a lasting state of happiness. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t experienced a lasting state, but it seems to me to be unattainable. Even if you did somehow get to this lasting state, wouldn’t it just become your normal state of mind? Would it still be happiness? Of course, the counter-argument for that could be: can you be depressed for a longer period of time? Most people will probably say yes; you can be depressed and feel depressed every day. I just take very different approaches to happiness and sadness.

I believe happiness is a much stronger feeling; much more dense. Sadness, though certainly capable of feeling very dense, seems less fleeting. It’s something that’s just there, and you can work through it if you want to, or you can let it take you over if you don’t fight it. Happiness hits you much harder – in a good way – and lets you know you’ve been hit. You don’t (well, I don’t) doubt it when you’re stroke by happiness. It doesn’t seem like something you can do anything about; it hits you, and you feel the effect instantly.

Spending most of my time with music, I often find my happiness therein. Certain things such as playful beats, a glorious vocal harmony or a screaming guitar or synth can set all my systems to ‘go,’ and bring upon my face a great big smile of happiness, where – for a moment – I lose all control over anything that happens around me, I even forget the music for just a second, and just feel the happiness; enjoy the ride that comes with it, there very sudden up and the just as sudden coming-down again afterwards, leaving you with the memory of the instance that just was, where you were hit by complete and utter happiness.

I think it’s important here not to confuse happiness with gladness. I’ve been wondering a lot about this ‘gladness’ today. I woke up this morning; winter is here; rain was falling; dark everywhere; early hours, and I really wanted to go into my dark-winter period, where I listen to sad music speaking of no hope whatsoever, telling me my future is doomed so why bother? But however hard I tried to get into that mood; listening to the music that normally does it for me this time of year; thinking dark thoughts; reading dark literature, it just didn’t do it. I realized I’m in too good a mental place this winter to be hit by my normal fall-from-grace. This winter I think I can go through with my gladness intact. Only problem is I haven’t done that for years, so I have to figure out how to cope with that.

My intention for trying to reach my dark mood was that I know what happens when I get into it. I know exactly how I react to the world around me, and I know pretty well how it is going to react to me. I know it’s not really for the benefit of anything but my own consciousness that tells me it’s okay to take a break during the winter – that it’s fine to let people see your ugly side, even if that ugly side isn’t really the one you are most of the time, but just the one you construct when the darkness becomes too consuming. After all, what you construct in your personality becomes you. If you have a tendency to go all emotional during winter, then that’s part of who you are. But alas, it seems I’m not going to enter that mental state this year, and my new friends might not get to know that side of me. And that might just be for the best.