Should We Quarantine Happiness
Updated: Nov 18, 2020
Recently I have felt waves of guilt after guilt about having feelings of happiness. Talk about complex emotions!!
Do I have the right to feel happy when so many people are suffering, hurting, depressed and anxious?
Which got me thinking during one of my sleepless nights…Do we have the right be happy during this terrible pandemic?
The question that I have heard over and over again, is how are we ever going to recover from this. Friends ask me how they will ever pay the mortgage or rent, will there be a job to go back to, will the children fall behind in school, will marriages and relationships survive…and the list of anxiety provoking questions continue…
The question that we should be asking is how we will bounce back as people, whole and ready to face the world. Like a ball that bounces back up, resilience is how we get up, dust ourselves from life’s challenges, failures and struggles.
Perhaps happiness is even more important during these times of unprecedented challenge, when we are being tested like never before.
How can we bounce back and rise above?
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, someone whom I refer to as an expert on happiness, has few great suggestions…
By creating the right conditions we can be even Stronger and even more resilient than we were before the start of this pandemic.
Truth is, sometimes in the morning I am screaming at my kids, by my first cup of coffee I am happy as a fairy, by lunch I worry for the wellbeing of my loved ones, by dinner I have found some sort of serenity and at two in the morning, I am figuring it all out by writing.
So many emotions. Each one so Complex. Each one so Extreme.
What’s a girl to do with of all these emotions?
By letting them in, but accepting them. By realizing that we are human and it is okay to feel these feelings.
By allowing ourselves to be human!
Allowing in the emotions, no matter how complex, is so critical, because it’s precisely when we reject them that they become that much more intense. Did you ever feel agitated at being agitated? Or angry because you were angry? It’s like a double whammy…not only were we already in the midst of the first feeling, that we went and added another layer on top of that…
Guess what! That first feeling was okay, but it’s that second feeling, that MEANING which we gave the feeling that’s creating an imbalance within us.
These are hard times. It’s okay to be anxious afraid or angry.
And it’s okay to be happy.