What Makes Me Happy?

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A close friend of mine recently introduced me to a game called ‘Dream Saturday’. The premise of the game is that you imagine you’re already living your dream life – dream job, dream finances, dream home – everything is exactly as you want it. Then you wake up on an ordinary Saturday. How do you spend your day?

Does the fact that we both ended up in tears playing this game show just how far these dreams seem to us? Or maybe it was speaking about our own happiness – how we would live for joy, not just survival – that made us so emotional. Some of the things we dreamed of may have been a little extravagant, but joy doesn’t have to be a pipe dream: should it be so unattainable to live in a warm country? To spend more time in the sunny sea? To have time to make music, see my friends, cook delicious food, and feel nourished and rested?

This is what makes me happy: songs that make my chest hurt. Really good gigs. Seeing puppies in the pub. The first sip of a crispy pint while waiting for my roast to arrive on a hungover Sunday. Waking up next to my boyfriend; the sunlight spilling through the curtains and making pretty patterns on his chest. A perfect cup of tea. Floating in the sea. Naked swimming. Lemon zest. Coriander. Being thrown around at a punk show, covered in other people’s sweat. Feeling understood. The sound of an electric guitar being plugged into an amp. A baby gripping onto my finger for dear life. Talking to toddlers. Flowers at my grandma’s dacha in Belarus. Eating my auntie’s chicken shashlik at my grandma’s dacha in Belarus. The way my dad replaces my cracked phone screen protector without asking when I visit home. The way my mum asks me what I want for dinner when I visit home. Feeling safe. Queer raves. Solidarity. Laying in the sun in Victoria Park drinking little aperol spritzes all day – maybe reading rich prose, like Virginia Woolf, or Zora Neale Hurston. Maybe just laughing with friends. Fresh croissants. Candles.

Sometimes I think that I’m always chasing my happiness; it’s always somewhere else. It used to give me an excuse to always think ahead, so that my mind was focused on the horizon, and never trapped in the moment. I used to feel infuriated by teachers at school who said, ‘these are the best days of your lives’. Why would you tell a group of kids it’s only downhill from there, when for most people it’s so blatantly untrue? I used to be obsessed with starting afresh – but I feel more settled within myself these days. I still feel that the future can be better, so it’s okay if I’m not totally happy right now. I have to think in this way throughout dreary winters.

London can be dark, wet, cold, and expensive. It might be inevitable to feel down through the winter months, but my hope comes back around at the first sight of daffodils; the first time it’s still light at 6pm; the first time I leave the flat without my giant puffer jacket; the first time I want to sit in the pub garden instead of inside by the fireplace. Today is sunny, so I feel happy. Maybe I’m as simple as a plant. Maybe my London lamentations are bound to be exasperated throughout winter, only to be evaporated by the summer. Maybe we all have to get through the winter just to enjoy the summer, and maybe it’s worth it in the end. Or maybe I just need to move somewhere warmer.

Maria Green

Maria Green is a writer. She is an MA graduate from UCL.

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