Happiness...

"Miserable and happy are not functions of what you have, what you look like, or what you achieve." ~ Geneen Roth

I've spent a lot of time over the past week or so reflecting on happiness.  Each of us has our own idea of what happiness is, how it is achieved, and how deserving we are of it.  It seems to me that, for as long as I can remember, I've always associated happiness with a lifestyle that is unachievable to me as someone who is profoundly overweight.  There is a simplistic idea embedded in my psyche that equates thin-ness with happiness.  I have this idea in my mind that, if I were thin, life would be significantly better.

You know that conversation you have in your head when you buy a Powerball ticket?  The jackpot is $200 million, and you buy your ticket with the, "Why not me?" question hanging in the air as the clerk hands you your potential fortune.  What would you do first?  Would you tell anyone?  Who would you tell first?  Would you quit your job immediately?  Would you donate a percentage of it to a church or a charity?  I love imagining what I would do first.  I love the idea of being in a position to actually help people in a significant and meaningful way.

In this same manner, I fantasize about being thin.  What would it feel like to sit on an airplane and have neither of my thighs touching an armrest?  I wouldn't have to worry about riding in a friend's car and not having the seatbelt fit.  What clothes would I buy?  How would I dress?  It's been years since I wore high heels - would I buy a boatload of 3-inch heels?  Would I join an indoor sports league and take up soccer again?  In high school I used to love to play golf on our local 9-hole course; would I be able to pick the clubs up again and play a round on a Florida course?  Would I take up a friend's offer to go out for a night of drinking and dancing?

I think what the quote above means is that we need to learn where it is that we find happiness, because losing weight isn't going to be the answer to it any more than winning the lottery is.  Perhaps that's why so many jackpot winners go broke so quickly after winning.  Happiness isn't in the things we buy, and it probably isn't going to be found underneath the layers of fat I'm shedding.  That's a big change in thinking for me. 

When I think about the happiest times in my life, it is almost exclusively tied to three things: people, travel, and learning.  For me, happiness lies in the moments shared with family and friends - memories of laughter, story-telling, and shared experiences.  "Remember that time Dad nearly burned down the vacation rental in Maine?"  Ahhh... good times, good times!  "Remember that huge blizzard when we were going to sled down the road, and when we got to the bottom the snowplow was coming straight at us?"  "Remember when we got to Paris and didn't have a hotel room booked, and we walked all over the city with our luggage trying to find somewhere decent with a room?" 

I, like many people who carry as much excess weight as I do, have battled clinical depression.  I am certain that it started as situational depression, but unequipped to handle the emotional consequences of bad choices I'd made, it became a long-term situation... and then I just kept making bad decision after bad decision, compounding everything.  If I didn't have two brilliant children (of whom I am immensely proud), I would call for a do-over... 'cause I think I can see how and where it all went wrong.  And it only took me 25 years to figure it out!

So it appears that losing this weight will not help me pay the IRS what they allege I owe them (dear sweet mother of God, if any of you reading this can fix that... talk about fantasy!).  It will not guarantee that I will find a man who is amazing and wants to share his life with me.  It won't even promise to make it possible for me to buy the clothes I want... after all, I'm still wicked short and decidedly un-wealthy.  Plus, designers don't generally create fabulous fashions for a 24" inseam.  It will not mean that I will have more time to do the things I wish I could do, or more money to do those things.

There's more to ponder here, but I'm starting to think that I'll be better off in a year or two if I keep my expectations for weight loss firmly planted in reality.  I can trust that I will be healthier a year from now.  My cholesterol will be lower.  My triglycerides will go down.  It will be easier for me to climb stairs, and I will have more energy than I do now.  I will probably feel more at ease in social situations, but being introverted is not going to change.  Who I am will not fundamentally change.  I will still prefer quiet settings to loud ones.  I will still need to remind myself that, just because someone doesn't like me doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with me.

Happiness, for me, would be having my entire family living within 2 hours' driving distance of each other.  It would mean that our children would know each other and be able to begin stories with, "My cousin and I..."  A place for family and friends to gather and share our stories and adventures in life.  That's where happiness is for me.  Size 6 or size 26, I think it's important to recognize that this is a weight loss journey - not a journey to nirvana.

Where does your happiness lie?

Scotland

I've been listening to BBC Radio Scotland a lot lately.  I don't just love the accent - it feels like home.  The more I listen to it, the more I find myself wishing that I could live there.  Not for the rest of my life - my family is in America - but for at least a year, or possibly two.

I visited Edinburgh in 1995 at the end of a very significant relationship.  I had been convinced that he was the one I'd be with forever.  He was from England, and I was from a rural New England town where most of my peers' parents worked at the local light bulb factory.  He fascinated me, and I loved being in the company of someone who had a different view of the world.  He was intelligent, and I indulged in many, many hours of dialogue with him - whatever time he would give me, I showed up for it.  I didn't know what to do when the relationship ended horribly, abruptly, and completely, so I traveled.  I made no reservations, I just left.

I took a bus to Boston, a plane to London, and a train from Victoria Station to Edinburgh.  As I crossed the Tay Bridge in Dundee heading north, I was transfixed.  The further north I went the more amazed I was by the beauty of the coastline, and I was shocked by the lack of real-estate development overlooking the water.  It was mile after mile of yellow fields and green grass on the left and towering brown cliffs and blue ocean views on the right.  The gigantic bales of hay - in enormous, bound circles - I marveled at how much they must weigh and wondered what sort of equipment lifted and hauled them.  I attended a Midwestern university and had friends who actually grew up on farms, and I'd never seen anything like that.

A man on the train saw my Gary Larson day calendar and asked me if I'd ever read anything by Bill Bryson.  I hadn't at the time, but promptly purchased The Lost Continent while I was in Edinburgh.  During our short conversation the man also told me that I looked Scottish - that I had the complexion of a Scotswoman, and I was very flattered.  Of course, when I returned home and told an English friend of the comment, I was informed that it simply meant that I had ruddy cheeks.  But at the time it felt like a small confirmation that I belonged there.

I only spent two nights in Edinburgh, and I didn't have enough money to visit the tourist attractions, so I spent a lot of time just walking.  I loved the gardens at the foot of the castle.  I sat on the top floor of a 2-story Burger King (on Princes Street, I think?) and marveled at the juxtaposition of eating fast food whilst overlooking a medieval castle.  It felt wrong - almost disrespectful.  Tasty, but disrespectful.

I visited the National Library briefly and wished that I had more time to research my family name.  My Great Uncle Bill had just published his extensive genealogical research about our family right before I went to Scotland, and I hadn't yet taken the time to read it.  If I had, I would have found that my ancestry goes back to the late sixteenth century in a small town called Stonehaven, just south of Aberdeen on the east coast. 

It was probably the first trip I ever took that was purely about the journey.  I didn't go there with the intent to visit anyone, or to sightsee with a fellow traveler.  I went by myself and hardly spoke for the two days I was there.  It was the first time I wanted nothing more than silence and space to grieve the end of the relationship.  I was exhausted emotionally and spiritually, and when I arrived in Edinburgh, I felt like I was home.  The whole city was a welcomed relief - it felt like a giant stuffed armchair next to a roaring fireplace in a cozy cottage on a winter's day.  It was everything I needed it to be.

I'm at a very different place in my life now, and I don't know if I need it to be anything more than what it actually is now.  I want to visit Stonehaven.  I'd like to walk along the waterfront and listen to the waves.  I'd like to visit their local heritage society and learn more about the seat of my family's lineage.  More than all of that, though, I would love to feel 'home' again.  The town where I grew up doesn't feel that way anymore, and I wonder if Scotland still will?  Or was it just the balm I needed to soothe an aching heart?

As I rack up the miles on this weight-loss journey, I find myself daydreaming of literally having Scotland as my end destination.  Perhaps divine intervention will strike and I will be gifted with a brilliant story to write, and I will become the next J. K. Rowling.  Until then, however, I will stick to my treadmill, renting videos from my local library about traveling in the UK to entertain me while I walk.  Unless someone out there reading this knows of a company in Scotland just dying to hire an American for a couple of years?