Challenge accepted. (And successfully completed!)

“Even on the worst days, there’s a possibility for joy.” –Kate Beckett (Castle, Episode 5x03)

In recent times, when someone asks me ‘How are you doing?’ I’ve been responding with ‘I’m happy. Life is awesome’, instead of the generic ‘I’m doing fine.’ One of my colleagues asked me if I was on drugs. No, it’s not over-enthusiasm. It’s the truth.

Three months ago, when I took up the 100 happy days challenge, I did it for a variety of reasons, the top two of which are these –

(a)    Last winter was a miserable period in my life; I missed home terribly, fell sick, and cried to my parents over Skype every day. I realized that I don’t do well with holidays on my own. As the summer approached and the spring semester was coming to a close, I was anxious each day as to all the misery the free time would bring. This project was supposed to help me stay positive and get me through my first summer away from home, and it did exactly that.

(b)    I cared too much about what I put up on social media. ‘Am I cool enough?’ is a burning question I still seek the answer to, nearly a decade after my teenage years. It constantly bothered me, and taking up a challenge like this forced me to be who I am on a public platform every day, and express myself without fearing petty judgment.

When I took up this challenge, I didn’t think it would be easy. Despite being an annoyingly positive person, I too have really, really crappy days, where I feel like I just want to crawl into bed and never wake up. Finding happiness on an average day is not that hard, but I doubted whether I could find it consistently`for a hundred days. Turns out, I was so wrong! This is one of the easiest things I have done in my life! Finding one happy thing a day? Pshhh. I had at least 27 things in a day I could be happy about. My morning coffee makes me happy. Dressing up for work makes me happy. A good breakfast (which I insist on everyday) makes me happy. Wearing my heels makes me happy. Doing math at work makes me happy. Singing along to my favourite songs on the bus makes me happy. Cooking myself dinner makes me happy. Netflix makes me happy. These things that are part of all my routine days make me happy, and they are independent of anyone else. Of course, the people in my life make me happy too. The real challenge was picking one out of those moments, and the bigger challenge was to try and be entertaining, because after all, I was televising my life for the world to see on Facebook and Instagram.

That being said, let’s talk about the crappy days. Were there bad days? Yes. There were days when I found something to be happy about in the morning and then the day grew progressively shitty towards the end. On such days, I felt like I was cheating when I updated my Facebook status, but then I comforted myself with the fact that no matter how horrible the day became later, I did have a moment of joy earlier in the day. My favourite ones, though, are the days that felt doomed right from the beginning. These are usually the weekends; where I’m completely unproductive all day, and I feel terrible about myself towards the end. Or when something really bad happened, and I was hurt and upset and just needed to wallow. Usually, on such days, I just go to bed and stay there and wait for the feeling of utter uselessness or despair to pass. But now, I was compelled to do something that made me happy, because otherwise, everyone in my life would know I had a not-so-great day. I know it sounds really bad when I say it like that, but I choose to look at it as positive reinforcement. I’m glad I had that social media pressure in my life, because it forced me to be happy about something each day.

Speaking of which, I feel like this challenge has also helped me get over my anxiety about what I put out on social media. No matter how honest the thoughts I put out there, I was in continuous fear of appearing lame and pretentious. Over the past few weeks, so many of my friends have reached out to me and told me otherwise. It makes me so wonderfully happy to hear such positive feedback, and to know that my happiness beings a smile to someone else I care about. Today, I feel more confident about wearing my heart on the internet, heedless of those who will bash my display of emotions as cheesy and melodramatic, because I know there’s a fabulous audience out there who feeds on dreams and optimism like I do, whether they are unashamed to admit it, or it is their secret guilty pleasure.

My one big take away from the last three months is that I have realized, repeatedly, that for me - Happiness is a choice. I want to be clear here that I don’t claim that happiness is always a choice for everyone, or that they can easily achieve it if they really want it. No. That would be insensitive of me towards those who go through spells of depression, or just generally are not very motivated by happiness. As for me, it has been the single biggest motivation in my life. My goal in life has always been simple – to be happy. Where do I see myself in 5 years? 10? 20 years? Do I see a successful career in Mathematics, marriage and children, and all the conventional things my life is supposed to be at a certain age? I don’t know. All I know is I see myself happy. I was told recently by a friend that I was ambitious. I laughed because to me that is a joke. Contrary to what my life looks like from the outside, I have little to no professional ambition. Sure, I’m hopefully on my way to get a PhD and become a Professor of Mathematics. But if that crashes and burns somehow – I am still going to be happy.  ‘You will find the one,’ friends tell me, despite a train-wreck of a dating life; and sure, it would be nice to share this extraordinary life with someone, but my happiness is not contingent on finding that person. If I have to live a long life without a partner to do the day to day, I am still going to be happy. These are the two most important things people see in their future – love, and a successful career. I don’t think either is imperative to my happiness. They would certainly be happy developments, but I wouldn’t be unhappy without them. For me, the only thing I need in my future is what I already have in the present – this positive outlook towards life and the ability to find joy on the darkest days. So long as I have that, life is awesome, and will continue to be. I am happy.

(P.s. All the #100happydays posts can be found here.)