Here’s what I’ve learned from being in college for the past three weeks: Happiness is pretty cool.
But before you judge me for dropping a large sum of money to learn something most 5-year olds know, let me elaborate. First off, there are different types of happiness. One kind is the bubbly exhilaration that comes from any variety of different things. It comes as a text from a person that makes you smile, or from finding a new song you know you can play on repeat millions of times before you finally get sick of it. It comes from painting your nails and winging your eyeliner and walking with a little more spring in your step just because you feel like it.
And that kind of happiness is great, but different from the kind of happiness that keeps you up at 2 a.m because you physically can’t stop smiling. You know that energy that wakes you up in a good mood even though it’s six in the morning and you went to bed three hours ago? That’s the kind of happiness that’s amazing.
So I’ve formulated a theory about people and happiness. I’ve met some very amazing people over the past three weeks. And sure, 21 days isn’t a very significant period of time, but these are people who I feel more myself with than most, if not all of the people I knew during high school. These are the friends that will show up at your door with Oreos if you’re having a bad day, give you hugs each time they see you (even if it’s only been a few hours), let you take naps in their room even when they’re not there and constantly tell you to do what makes you happy. Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard and said, “I just want you to be happy” more times than I care to even attempt counting.
And that’s really awesome. Because I think saying, “I hope you find the happiness you deserve,” comes from the place of knowing what it’s like to have days without any happiness at all. No one wishes that on another person.
We all value our own happiness, sure. But you know that thing we do when we’re sad but don’t want the people closest to us to know? The “I’m fine”s, slightly forced smiles and pretend energy? Why do we do that? We try so hard to hide our own unhappiness, yet whenever we know someone else to be, we have an incredible capacity to drop everything for a little while and go knock on their door. And in this sense, happiness is hypocritical. We don’t want people to know when we lack it, but rush to help if we know others do. I think that says something good about people. We’re all just trying to help each other out, and if we’re not, we should be. Maybe it’s a little hypocritical, but for once, I think it’s the kind of hypocrisy I can get on board with.
