My Happiest Day, by Betsy

First of all. What’s happy? Until I define what happy is for me, I cannot begin to address the question of what was my happiest day. So I click on the dictionary on my dock. Happy: feeling or showing pleasure or contentment. This is not much help. Feeling and Showing are two different things—entirely different. And pleasure and contentment are equally different from one another. So which is it? Never mind. I’ll tackle the question from another angle.

I suppose the day I was born may have actually been my happiest day because if I hadn’t been born, there would have been no happy days—zero, zilch. Contemplating this I realize that something was missing in order for my entrance into the world to make me happy; namely, awareness. One must be aware—conscious—of a situation in order to qualify it. Further, to qualify it in the superlative one must have other experiences, situations, with which to compare.

Another problem with defining my happiest day is that my memory is not good enough for me to remember my degree of happiness in some distant time of my life. Nevertheless, allow me to take a chronological journey beginning with birth in my quest to pick out, well, maybe a few of my happiest days.

At 9 hours of age I was extremely happy, probably desperately happy, to have a nipple stuck in my mouth. I was desperately hungry. No conscious awareness there, just survival instinct. So that doesn’t qualify.

Nine months old—same thing—food and milk. Enter the smiling face looking at me and the cuddling and love I am feeling from my parents. I must be very happy. Look at me I’m laughing.But again there is little or no understanding, so I cant really qualify my feelings.

Nine years old and I have definitely learned the difference between happy and not happy. There are lots of things that make me happy now. Alas, though, today 70 plus years later I cannot bring back the feeling. I just know I probably was happy sometimes. But happiest eludes me. Again it’s just a memory—a pleasant memory, but still a memory.

Twenty nine, thirty nine. Yes that’s it! The birth of my children. Certainly three of the happiest events of my life. Forty nine, acknowledging my true self and coming out of the closet. I don’t remember that being my happiest day. It was a difficult time. Happiness and resolution being the result. Approaching 79 my wedding day to the love of my life, but then we had already been together and happy for nearly 30 years. That day did also represent the triumph of a political movement of which we had been a part. Certainly qualifies as one of my happiest days. But again, THE happiest? No way to measure.

All these nines— all the way up to seventy nine, I still cannot honestly say “without a doubt I remember my happiest day.”

One of my favorite spiritual guides, Ekhart Tolle says the past is an illusion because it, that is the memory, is a creation of our mind. It is no longer happening—it is no longer a reality. The only reality is the NOW.

Aha! I think I’ve got it! This exercise in contemplating my happiest day has brought me to one conclusion: my happiest day is NOW, this moment in time. It’s quite clear to me really. Now is the only thing that is real and I am a part of it. I am here, alive, conscious and aware and participating in life. THIS is my happiest day.

© 31 October 2016

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.