When you’re a kid, time seems endless. You’re in school FOREVER and summer break lasts ALL YEAR and when you are fighting with your friends it’s the END OF THE WORLD. There are just hours and hours in the day to fill up with school and friends and hobbies, and it seems like time moves so slowly through all the awkward and mortifying parts. But then all of a sudden you are in your 30’s asking yourself if you want to indulge and put an ounce of cheddar on your steamed broccoli because maybe, JUST MAYBE, skipping the cheese will allow you an extra 10 minutes of heart-beating time at the end of your life. Time becomes so precious, and it ticks away louder and louder each year you are gifted with life.
In my younger, people-pleasing days, my time meant nothing to me. I didn’t value it, and I spent all of it inviting problems in because I was taught that worrying about yourself and putting yourself first was selfish. It was better to help everyone else, especially if it came with great cost or sacrifice on your end. That became the sackcloth and ashes to drag around, supposedly adding to my value as a “good person”. But I started noticing that none of the things I was doing was contributing to my own happiness. Was I doing the “right” things and making the “right” choices? To my hometown culture, I was- and that was more important than being happy or fulfilled. Why did I feel so frustrated when everyone else seemed so happy to live this way? What was wrong with me that I didn’t want to give away my time anymore? What piece of humanity was I missing that didn’t self-motivate me for a life of service?
But then as it does, time and experience taught me so many lessons, the most difficult way possible. I realized that no one valued my happiness, least of all me. I needed to find ways to live that would still make me a good person, but that would also make me happy and genuine and not feel like I had to put on a mask to cover my resentment. So I had to start making it a priority. I had to start choosing things that made me happy, even when they were at odds with what the expectations of me were at the time. Choosing personal happiness doesn’t mean stomping all over someone else’s life and choices in the name of my own interests, but rather thinking of directing energy toward a goal I actually wanted instead of a goal that I should want. I was gonna have to get up every day and use energy to do something, so why not at least something i really wanted?
The first step I took was moving away. It’s not for everyone, and it’s hard as hell to live for 28 years with your family surrounding you and then be 2,100 miles away the next day. But the minute I left the nest and my town, I felt the need for all the armor and masks fall away. No one demanded that I help, no one monopolized my free weekends, and no one just “popped by” to judge my house and habits. There is no one else in the world with a key to our place, and it feels so good to be secure in our sanctuary. I started wearing things and eating things and experiencing things that *I* wanted to- things that made my old world laugh and roll their eyes. And honestly? I started to find GREAT pleasure in getting those eye rolls. I have the tendency toward passive-aggressive behavior, so I will have to watch in the future, but I do admit to getting great satisfaction from watching the eyes of my past bulge out in shock when I roll up. I don’t make these choices specifically to shock them, but I am not making choices to please them any longer- I am making choices that promote my own happiness and health, and that of the people who are in my support network. As Elizabeth Bennett so eloquently put it, “I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”
Nowadays my time is a precious commodity- there are few hours in between working, creating, cleaning, cooking, and errands. I am not going to waste it on things that don’t make me happy. I want to cook delicious, elaborate meals and savor them with my husband next to me. I want to binge watch Friends while knotting macrame produce bags. I want to eliminate all paper products and be off-grid. I want to help animals more than people in my free time. I want to sit on my own back porch at sunrise, sipping coffee I made, looking at land I cultivated and listen to the deafening silence of the forest in the morning. I want to be okay with saying what I want out loud and not feeling the need to justify WHY I want those things (BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOU JUST DO AND THAT’S OKAY).
Call me selfish, call me arrogant, call me self-centered— that all may be true... but you can also call me happy, and that is what matters.