I was in our doctor’s office a while ago.  Finding a family doctor here was an adventure that I will talk about another time.  I was sitting in the waiting room, along with several other people, listening to two young women carrying on a rather personal conversation in tones loud enough for everyone to hear.  We all pretended to be engaged with our magazines or phones, but we could not help but hear every word.

One of them was complaining about how her boyfriend was pulling away from her and the other one was comforting her.  We heard how he was spending more time working, or playing video games, how they hadn’t been intimate (they weren’t as delicate as that) in months and how he had initiated several conversations about ending their relationship.  Her friend’s response? Things would change when they got married or when they had their first child, whichever came first.

I think at this point in the conversation my head came up and I looked at them.  Had they looked my way they would have seen my look of horror.  If I been braver I would have told them that their ideas were wrong.  Why do people think you can fix relationships by getting married or having children?  Why do people want to stay in relationships where one person doesn’t want to be there? And why, in this day and age, are young women still dependent on men to provide support for them and their children?

I raised boys.  If I had raised girls my overriding message to them would have been for them to be able to look after themselves and any children they might have on their own, for them to get the skills and experience they needed to be independent.  Not they would have had to be alone, not at all, but things happen.  Relationships end, people lose jobs, and people die.  When a woman has no skills and these things happen, she and her children are vulnerable, their options are limited. And that is something we shouldn’t want to happen to anyone.

But the conversation between the young women continued and my desire to shake them and make listen to me intensified.  They started talking about how happy they would be if only they could go on a vacation, or get a new car, or lose those few extra pounds; they listed many things they thought would make them, and their boyfriends, happy.  Again, if they had seen my face they would have stopped.

I hear this all the time, and not just from young women.  People look for things to have or things to happen to make them happy, as if happiness is a “thing” that can be bestowed.  “Here is your bag of happiness, now go and be happy.”  Happiness comes from you.  It’s not another person’s job to make you happy.  It can’t be found in the folds of a new dress or in the sand on a faraway beach.  Those things might bring a fleeting happiness, but then you have to look for the next thing to bring that feeling. And it  doesn’t come from complaining or whining.  That just sucks you into negativity.  Happiness is something that starts in you.  It’s all tied together; being grateful and seeing joy and appreciating what you do have, being content. You can’t be those things if you are constantly upset about what you don’t have or what you can’t get or what others have that you don’t have or what others get that you don’t.  Does that mean we shouldn’t want more or try to be more?  No, not at all.  Contentment doesn’t have to mean complacency.  And no one is happy all the time, but it should be the feeling that you can identify in your life more often than any other.

When the two young women went back into one of the little consulting rooms I closed my magazine.  I thought about how young they were and how they needed more life experience to truly know things.  I wished there was a way to give young men and women the advice they really need, to share with them the wisdom they can’t get until they’ve lived more than just a decade or two on this earth.  It can’t happen, I know.  I didn’t listen to anyone when I was that age, I knew everything then, so why would I expect young people to listen to me?  It’s only now, after more than 50 years on this planet and after dealing with children and parents and bureaucracies for more than 30 years, that I have come to the knowledge I have.  And that knowledge tells me those two young women will get lessons to teach them what it is they need to learn, and that I heard them to reinforce the lessons I’ve learned.

Do something today to make you happy.  Listen to music, sit in the sun, walk on a beach, chat with a friend, smile at a stranger.  No one is going to hand you a bag of happiness;  you have to build it, in you, one thought, one act, one positive statement at a time until it becomes your way of being and you realize you are…..happy!