happiness

Cognitive dissonance is a term for what happens when you experience something which upsets your understanding of how the world works. Like being told by the people you surround yourself with that a comet will destroy the world on October 12th, giving away all your worldly possessions, breaking ties with your family and friends, and then waking up on October 13th to someone’s Beyoncé alarm.

As I climbed into a yellow cab outside JFK three weeks ago, I believed that Trump’s loss was inevitable. I believed this with the same depth of surety with which I’d once dismissed the Internet as ‘just a fad’. I was about to become very familiar with cognitive dissonance.

As I looked out the taxi window onto the streets of Queens I was also preparing myself to be lonely in a new city, to be ready for rejection on both sides. But despite my anxieties, New York City and I just…clicked. Within days we ended up giggling together, telling in-jokes and slamming Hennessey and Red Bulls in dive bars at 3:00am. I remember a moment, maybe a week before I flew out of New Zealand, when I read something about New York being a place that all sorts of dreamers headed, in order to birth their ideas. And that was it, I met so many people who had dreams, and talents, and self belief. And they talked with me. They shuffled along the bench and made room for my ass and my ideas. My imaginative soul had found a new home.

This all began well before election day. I had made what ended up being a very good decision to begin my exploration of the city from a Williamsburg base. From there I found great coffee, astounding vegan Reuben sandwiches, and hundreds of artisans practising intricate arts, from distilling to button-making. I found centres for Judaic thought, summer food-markets that looked out over Manhattan, and people who looked me in the eye when I explained who I wanted to be. And looking back on it, I realise that as much as that time was about New York charming me, it was also about me appealing to her.

It isn’t easy to explain, but I think it was about being open to anything. It was about starting the conversations, sitting at the bar rather than the booth, dancing on the rooftop rather than in my dreams. It was about expression and engagement. It was also about being comfortable and confident. I was surprised to find I was more comfortable in that city than anywhere else I’d ever travelled. I was frequently a racial minority of one, but most of my endearing moments were with people who had been labelled as minorities their whole lives. I was often lost, but I quickly built a trust that lost was a euphemism for ‘on the way to an unexpected experience.’

And then just as all was going so well, there was that election night. At around 4:00pm I stood on the corner of 46th and 9th Ave, debating which party to attend. A tall beggar in a thick coat asked me for a dollar for cawfee, and I declined. He began an explanation as to why I was making a poor choice. As he talked I noticed shapely sculptures outside an Irish bar, The Playwright. I gave him a ‘waddayagunnado?’ shrug and explained I had no change and I was meeting a friend. A friend called Bud. Who was apparently half-price between 4 and 6pm. Good timing Bud.

Half the screens above the bar showed sport, the other showed a mute countdown to the first voting results. I dragged a stool under myself and drank in the scene. There was a good mix of characterful faces, and there was a password for free wi-fi. So I ordered a beer, connected, and an hour out from the start of Trump’s ascendency I found out a young man I knew had taken his life. I looked about the thickening crowd, I looked down at my hand about the pint glass, and I looked back to the last times I heard from him. I swallowed back my beer then I noticed a woman next to me was drinking from two different glasses.

‘What are you drinking?’ I enquired, hoping for something more exotic than Budweiser.

‘Hennessey,’ she replied, ‘and Red Bull.’

And in that exchange I found a new friend. And even as I struggled to come to terms with a feelings of loss, either I or the universe found a way to balance some sort of scales. I’m not suggesting that a new friendship can offset such dreadful loss. No, it was simply my head trying to find a way to reconcile a fresh case of cognitive dissonance.

The next morning I said goodbye to Matt from Bow Bridge in Central Park. I think he would have appreciated the view, and my imagining characters from the film Highlander beside me, talking about the coming end of days. I looked to the water below, the layer of fallen leaves. Then I looked up to the skyline, to the sunshadow forms of skyscrapers, and the sun behind them. And although I felt lead in my centre, I also felt the lightness that acceptance in a strange and new place brings. And now I wish that somehow I’d been able to help Matt find that. Or whatever it was that he’d needed to make a different choice.

The days following the US election results have reminded me of the importance of finding our voices. Of telling stories, and of being actively, positively human. And so I am going to start a new set of writings in the coming weeks. I’m going to try to hunt out 100 tools for being human. From Eye Contact to Trees, from Hope to Lego, I’ll be exploring the things that help me maintain my positivity, my humanity, in what can be a difficult world if we let it. Because I need to ensure that I’m doing, rather than simply being. And because I want to be there for people, more effectively than I have been in the past.

Over the past week I’m the happiest I remember ever being, but why is that? I feel a need to delve deeper into my state to understand its source, to determine what things lie behind it, as maybe then I can perpetuate it. I’m not looking for a universal answer, I have no doubt we all vary in the catalysts for our joy. I’ll be happy enough (haha) if I can develop a personal answer. And in the hunt, maybe others will find something useful too.

After recently spending a short time living at the base of the Rocky Mountains and then in the Scottish Highlands, I’ve come to better understand how much my surroundings affect my mental state. When I spend time living in busy spaces, be it the centre of Edinburgh or the edge of Wellington, I find I can jitter under the influence of too many distractions. My thoughts reflect the rapid changes in my environment and while I am thrilled to be able to access so many different experiences, I struggle to prioritise the important things. I get distracted by the process of just living. As a result I frequently feel an urge to climb aboard a train to Shannon, or bike down to Leith, or catch a boat to Marlborough. And when I do this, when I disembark into birdsong, ocean breezes and woodland scents I can’t smother my grin. I’m bounded by stretched out horizons sculpted by natural forces rather than urban planners. My thoughts slow to match the pace of my new surrounds, the slow steady shift of the seasons, the tides, the weather. And amongst the trees, hills and sand dunes happiness finds its way into me a little more quickly. Or maybe it’s just that there is less to distract me from its persistent presence?

One of the great by-products of time spent surrounded by Scottish Lochs, Kapiti Coast estuaries and Colorado foothills is that these immersive and ever-changing environments inspires physicality. I want to bike through them, hike amongst them, climb them, jump into waterholes from them. They encourage natural paths to fitness, and when I’m fit and active two things happen. Firstly I no longer have to think about how unfit and inactive I’m becoming, and that’s such a hideous, ugly psychological burden. Secondly I want to share my love of these spaces with friends and family. So rock climbing, swimming and water fights replace pub haunting as my communal activities of choice. And I honestly believe that the relationships developed through positive activities can be stronger and deeper than those developed through sharing shouted conversations in nightclubs. Of course there’s little better than sharing a glass of wine or cider on a beach after a hard day in the outdoors…

So there’s a degree of physicality involved in my ongoing happiness. But these natural spaces also tend to enhance my creativity and I need to create to feel whole. I need to write long letters, draw intricate sketches and build cairns from stones harvested along river banks. It’s this making, crafting, doing, that is one of my best indicators for how comfortable I am. When I’m happy my creative capabilities become second nature, they flow more cleanly from me. So I guess in some ways they’re a symptom of my happiness as much as a cause of it. But sitting making pottery in the woods isn’t enough, not without anyone to share the results with. I love people too much.

My relationships with other people might well transcend all else as the primary keys to my positivity. Over recent years I’ve realised that I don’t need to entertain people in order to hold their attention, I just need to be myself. I’ve always enjoyed listening to people, trying to understand the things that they believe about the world. Taking up writing has intensified my interest, and I love talking with new friends and old, and engaging with them. I’ve been through enough ups and downs in my life to be finally able to offer long, deep, meandering conversations that can be of benefit to both those I talk to, and to myself. It can be scary at times, letting people see the real me. But it also seems to enable my friends to talk more honestly about themselves, and these growing relationships make me happier than anything else.

I’ve also learnt the value of being a positive person, on being a beneficial influence on the people whose company you enjoy. This has left me very grateful to the people I’ve learnt this from, and I’ve found that expression of this gratitude is another key to a blissful state. If I take the time to talk honestly to people about how much I appreciate them, or what they’ve done, we both get to feel good about it. At times that’s difficult in a low-key humble-is-best country like New Zealand, people aren’t always comfortable with having their little kindnesses praised. But it’s one of those things that takes just a little effort, and rewards both parties, despite any potential blushing and mumbling. I am helped along every day by people, and I want to always remember to acknowledge this, and to learn from their generosity of spirit.

As I’ve been writing this article I’ve realised that the simple process of learning new things is one more thing that brings me joy. I gain something from learning new things. The act of discovery, of learning new skills or simply improving my knowledge motivates me. I love researching the history of wolf hunting in Russia, or learning how to craft straw bales, or how to whisky is made. Or delving into what I need in order to be happy.

It seems then that all the conditions for living a pretty sweet life are within my control. They’re all reassuringly positive, I don’t get off on lighting fires…actually, maybe just a little. But good fires. But it’s not the denigration of others that makes me smile, it’s not the harvesting of power, nor the accumulation of wealth. I simply need to immerse myself in my environment, in my creativity, and in my relationships with my friends. It is very heartening to realise that happiness might well be a lifestyle, rather than a destination or a goal.