A couple years ago, when I was a junior in college, I lost my grandma. She passed away while we were thousands of miles apart. That same semester I got seriously ill with a bad fever and struggled with some other personal issues. My grandma’s death though was the absolute worst; I felt sick that I didn’t get to say goodbye and was vexed by guilt for not being there for her in her last months.
But junior year was not all bad news: I also got my dream internship with the US Department of State. I had the time of my life on that internship, which sent me all the way to Bahrain. I also met someone for whom I ended up caring deeply, more deeply than I thought myself capable of. And then that person was out of my life, too.
Those are not the only painful experiences I’ve had in my life, of course; like everyone else who walks this planet I carry baggage. The problem is not what happened, but how I dealt with it. For a long time I shut myself off, I’ve been cold and detached… and in a lot of ways miserable. I had so many amazing things happen to me, like getting a Fulbright, graduating, traveling; I have my family, my friends, and my good health. But still, I felt like something was missing.
I can pin that on my grandma’s passing, the people I lost, my failed relationships… and up until recently, I did. I blamed everyone and everything else for my misery.
This is not to say I was sad all the time, no. Miserable people can often experience happiness, enjoy certain experiences, even be grateful for all the good things in their lives but underneath it all there is a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning for something undefinable. That yearning is what kept me awake at night, so to speak, and prevented me from being a truly happy person.
Gradually, over the past couple of months, I began to see the error of my ways. It’s hard to explain exactly how or why I started reflecting on my own point of view because I can’t say it was one particular moment or epiphany. However, one specific experience really captures my journey to happiness- our visit to Artyom island.
Entrance to Artyom
Artyom or Pirallahi is an island about 45 minutes away from Baku. My friends and I decided to go there on a whim one Sunday, to explore and relax. There is really nothing special about Artyom, the biggest thing there is an oil refinery or some other oil-related industry. In fact, we got into a bit of trouble because we accidentally wandered onto SOCAR (national oil company) property and were detained by security until they took down our names.
After out little run-in with the authorities we went to a park where we met some locals who took us to the bazar- a warehouse with fake brands and ladies who told me it was not appropriate to wear boots in springtime.
Artyom Bazar
After that we went to this tiny little restaurant that didn’t even have a name. They served the best fish I’ve had in a long time, and people were super welcoming and friendly. After lunch we stumbled onto a chaixana (tea house) where we got the cheapest and most high-quality gallian (hookah) ever- 4AZN (about 6USD) for a hookah that lasted over an hour. Plus we got sweets, nuts, and tea for almost nothing. It was amazing. Finally, when we tried to get back to the city, we wandered around for a while looking for the bus, which never arrived. Instead we hitched a ride with a vegetable salesman with a van- my first hitchhiking experience ever!
Walking around Artyom, a pretty run-down area with seemingly nothing to offer and discovering all the great thing about it, plus enjoying the company of my amazing friends, really made me think. I realized that finding beauty and joy in anything is really just a question of your perspective. If you come in with a negative mindset, you’d see Artyom as just a decayed place… but if you look a little deeper you can find a treasure. That made me think about my life- how everything is really a question of perspective and how we process things. I used to hear that from others and write it off as feel-good BS, but now I see that being miserable and being happy are both choices we make.
We can wait for the day when we have a nice house, a brand new Mercedes, the perfect spouse, ideal job, and a Golden Retriever to be happy but the truth is circumstances do not determine happiness- we do it ourselves. So I am done waiting. I decided that from here on in I will wake up with a smile, think about all the positive things in my life and really feel the gratitude, and finally enjoy every day.
It works. To prove it I started the #100happydays challenge (check it out:
). Every day I post something new that I am happy about, something that put a smile on my face that day, and yes- I have had something for every single day so far. Moreover, ever since I changed my mindset I have been feeling a lot better and things have been going infinitely better in my life. I can take bad news with stride and enjoy everyday experiences like a walk on the seaside with friends more fully. And it feels amazing.
Choosing to be happy doesn’t mean you can’t be sad sometimes (just like being in a state of misery does not preclude one from happiness). I have had challenging moments and disappointments. The difference is that now I don’t let them define me, I don’t sulk. I talk to a friend about it or process whatever happened, and then I move on.
The decision to be happy IS a decision, and it’s not for everyone. It took me a good, long while to get here. It’s a journey and not one I can say I have completed, nor do I believe I ever will complete. Don’t be judgmental towards people who aren’t there, it’s their choice to live however they want- being miserable is okay, too, and it’s important to respect other people’s space.
Rumi put best when he wrote, “Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself.”
South of Russia, North of Iran 