So if happiness is NOT as simple as a Cup O Soup, where does it come from?

I mean, I was thinking last night after I blogged but before I went to bed about the last time I can remember that I was totally truly happy with life in general. The thing is, I suspect that many people never think about being happy with everything in their lives, some don’t think it will ever happen and so don’t try, and some spend their lives trying but are forever disappointed.

That leaves a very small percentage that either don’t need much to make them happy, or those that have somehow attained every wish they ever had and are happy as pigs in mud. Or shit, whichever makes them happier.

Some days I think I fall into the category where it doesn’t take much (and some days that it takes TOO much) to make me happy, and then other days I think I’m just being realistic that really there will never be a time where I am just 100% happy with whatever is happening in my life. Then I start thinking, well, if I will never be 100% happy, then what’s the best I can hope for? I think that’s where people start settling…they figure that the one thing they want isn’t out there, so they may as well take what they can get. Whatever car, house, job, whatever.

It’s true that maybe I think too much, it’s also probably true that I have an overinflated idea of what it would take to make me happy, and maybe it’s also true that the choices I make tend towards the instant gratification side than the long-term pursuit of happy-ness. It’s definitely true that in the past I made choices that I THOUGHT would make me happy but they didn’t. Not to say that those choices weren’t good ones in the end, but all the same I made them more in the interest of short term and not long term satisfaction.

For example – leaving PK, definitely made me happy. That was a situation that wasn’t going to get better no matter how long I stuck with it or how long I tried to make it work. Leaving GoodMan – I’m up in the air on that. In a lot of ways, I made the decision in haste. Sometimes what seems insurmountable to a twenty-five year old is a little different when viewed by a thirty-one year old. I guess most of life is like that, you just kind of make the decisions that seem right at the time and hope that time will prove to you that you made the right one. Other decisions are no brainer good ones – taking my new job, seeing the Kid more, getting the Jeep…just sometimes I wonder whether I am sometimes expecting too much out of life. I guess not every day is delirious happiness but it would be cool if it was.

I think that GoodMan experience made me a little less sure of my decisions. I find myself, especially lately, second-guessing everything. Thinking maybe if I push a little harder or wait a little longer that the problems I have will either resolve themselves or somehow go away. I’m just too afraid of making the bad ones I guess. I finally took steps today to resolve some issues (ahem, IRS) that have been hanging around for a while, and it feels great – but the problems started with procrastination and being too afraid to take care of business.

So getting back to the Cup O Soup question – if happiness isn’t a Cup O Soup, then what is it? And how do you find it?