By BEC SPARROW
When you experience an event that brings you to your knees – it’s supposed to irrevocably change the way you live your life.
Actually, even if you don’t experience a life-shattering event, just the mere act of getting older is meant to do that.
By the time you turn 40 you should be able to cut through life’s froth and trivialities and see what truly matters.
Right?
And for the most part it’s been true for me. At 41, I don’t tend to sweat the small stuff. I completely and utterly understand that love and being with the people you love is all that matters.
And yet.
I’m never happy. I’M. NEVER. HAPPY.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration, obviously. I am happy. I have plenty of happy moments (just seeing the new Offspring Season 4 sneak peek made me happy last week. Or maybe it was just seeing Dr Patrick … Oh God I have missed you Dr Patrick Reed.). But, in all seriousness I live my life always sort of wishing for the future, thinking “I will be happier when …”
– When we’re no longer renting and we can finally have our own home.
– When we have a spare room and I can have my own study (right now I’d settle for my own desk …)
– When our credit cards are paid off.
– When my next book comes out.
– When we can have a cleaner.
– When we can afford a 7-seater car.
When when when when when. Or, you know, NEVER (if I could write that in 72 point, I so would).
Because it’s a Groundhog Day style trap I’ve repeatedly fallen into for most of my life. The-I’ll-Be-Happy-When Trap.
Logically I know that pegging my happiness on future goals and (let’s-be-honest) acquisitions means that you are failing to understand that today is all that matters. Today. Now. This moment is when you must make the choice to be happy.