Happiness and Joy

OOOOOHHHH.  I probably shouldn't blog after getting up at 4 am.  I probably shouldn't blog after drinking 4 cups of coffee and a cinnamon dolce latte before noon...but I'm going to!  Pretty much because... I'm cool like that!

I have been thinking recently about happiness.  I know, I know... such deep thoughts I have, but hear me out on this.  I have decided (although I would imagine someone else has decided long before me) that happiness is WHAT I am and joyful should be WHO I am.  I've written so much here about finding happiness, being happy, holding onto happy.  Those are all good things.  Happiness matters.  I don't want to face my days with a frown or be a cranky pants.  Some days aren't great.  Today I was training to open at work, which meant being there at 5 am.  That means (since I live 20 minutes away) that I had to get up at 4 am.  Let me just say... not happy about that!  I did it though, because for this season of my life it's what I have to do.  Happiness wasn't in my morning, until I decided to let it be.

I have been stressed about some things lately.  I don't want to be.  I want to pretend that everything is honky dory an I am not stressed... but I am.  I worry.  I fret.  I think about what I need to do and how to pull it all together.  I put a good face out for others.  Yet, I worry.  Stress makes me unhappy.  Worry makes me not sleep.  When I am tired its hard to put a smile on this face... Happiness isn't a part of that path.

Yet as I have thought more about it... happy is WHAT I am.  It's situational.  It depends on outside circumstances and how I react to them.  Happy is important, but I can't always be happy.  Sometimes its hard to get to that place.

However, joyful is WHO I want to be.  I want there to be joy in my life, simply for the living.  I have nothing that should take away that joy.  Things may not be exactly as I want them right now, but I have no reason to not have joy in my life.  Joyfulness is about choosing to be thankful and live that out.  Happiness comes and goes, joyfulness is a long term commitment.

I used to be afraid of commitment.  I'm not so much anymore.

So, I want to live with joy.  I want it to be part of who I am.  I realize that I won't always be happy.  Life is hard and sometimes things are difficult.  I won't always have a smile on my face... but I want joy to shine from my life.  I want to be peaceful, joyful, and real.  In the midst of my stress I want there to be a place of peace and joy.

I recently told someone I was one of the most laid back people they would ever meet.  Is that true?  Not in the past, but more so every day as I attempt to learn to live with a joyful heart... I want to embrace and share joy.  The happiness that comes with knowing exactly who will provide.

... one month later...

“There is more to us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps

for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.”

Kurt Hahn*

I was out and about in Dayton today… went to a job interview, hung out at the GS council with a great friend, bought some cake making stuff, went for a run, harassed my (very lazy) dog… the things that make up my life these days.  It was a beautiful day… and suddenly, mid afternoon I realized that it has been a month since I stood on the top of Katahdin.  A whole month!  How did that happen?  I have been back in Ohio for 2 weeks.  Two weeks!  How did that happen?

One month has passed.  In some ways it feels like a lifetime.  In some ways it was yesterday.  So where do I stand a month later?  One month later… I don’t want to forget how alive I felt on top of Katahdin.  How huge of an accomplishment I felt I had achieved.. One month later I don’t want to forget how beautiful that moment was… and how hard I fought to get there.  I proved a lot of people wrong… I proved myself wrong.  I never quit or cried, I never gave up or gave in.  I met amazing people, I fell in love with life and living again.  I remembered to live in the moments, as hard and ugly or beautiful and wonderful as they were.  I remembered what it means to be passionate about living your life.  I remembered what it means to be peaceful.  I remembered what it means to live your dreams, as ridiculous and unattainable as they seem to others.  I remembered what it is like to do life with people who “get it” when no one else does.

Mostly I remembered what it was like to be happy.  Some days I feel so immature and selfish.  Some days I feel really irresponsible and my bank account says I am getting to be pretty desperate… but man was I happy on the trail.  Not just because I had no responsibilities or tough decisions… not because it was perfect and easy… but because I just WAS happy.  I’m trying hard to hold onto that.

Honestly?  I want nothing more than I want to be back in the woods.  I think about it, plan for it, pray about it and dream.  My life made sense there.  I felt ALIVE every day.  It wasn’t easy or pain-free.  It didn’t always go the way I thought it would.  There were days that were frustrating and hard... but it's a beautiful life being a hiker.  Beautiful.

I am trying hard to keep remembering the lessons I learned on the mountains of the east this summer.  It seems like a dream.   I wish things like that I had taken more pictures or kept a better journal.  I sometimes wish I had turned around on Katahdin and hiked south all the way to Georgia… just to breath in a few more days/weeks/months in the mountains.  When I was hiking people would say “is this the first time you have thru hiked” and I would say “this is the ONLY time I will thru hike” and yet now I think almost every day about if I would do it again… and some days I really think I would.

Maybe I am just nostalgic for the mountains and the simplicity and my friends.  Maybe I just want to be back in that place that made me so happy with people who understood. 

My camera wasn’t always working at the end of the trip (much like everything else electronic in my pack) and I would stand on mountain tops and stare at amazing views and tell myself… this one is just for you Carly, this one is just for the memory… you get to keep this one.  So much of my hike is that way in my head.  I get the memories… I can’t put them into words or show a good picture.  I just get to keep them for me.  I relive them when I am driving or when I am trying to sleep at night.  The memories won’t ever be as amazing as the experience.  Yet I am blessed to have them.

People in Ohio don’t always understand (some do!) or even care much about my big hike.  It doesn’t fit into their lives and the busyness, and I get that.  Sometimes I allow myself to be shocked how very little people care about the last 6 months of my life…. until I realize how selfish it is to even think that.  I had this experience, I lived the dream, I can’t expect everyone to be as amazed by it as I am.

And so, I find myself here, one month after Katahdin… I don’t miss a lot of the nitty gritty parts of the  trail, but I miss some of it more than is probably reasonable.  Sometimes I hope it won’t always be this way, that I won’t ALWAYS think of it on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.  Mostly though I hope it will ALWAYS be this way.

In Monson, a hiker friend and I were talking after dinner one night.  I had met him in North Carolina and then run into him again near Mt. Washington… then saw him in Monson.  He told me that at Mt. Washington he thought I was a different person, so much happier and more at peace than in North Carolina.  That’s what I want… that’s who I want to be.

My life is a mess of contradictions.  Sometimes I think I am going crazy.

Yet the AT will always be a part of who I am.  I want to be peaceful.  I want to love life.  I want to embrace this time and the opportunities that are in front of me. 

I am blessed.

Last week my friend Patrick sent me a picture of me

(does that sentence make sense to anyone but me?!). 

At the time I told him I hated it because I look like... well, goof troop really.

He says its his favorite.

 My friend Betsie told me it makes me look like a blind person.

This picture makes me laugh though... and I put it here because today, in Ohio, I want to remember days like this... a beautiful day in Vermont with a surprise deli and an unexpected slack pack into Hanover, NH.

A beautiful day on the trail...

enjoying sunshine, friends, laughter, and trail magic beauty.

 Today I thought a lot about wanting to be here...

 or here...

 And I thought a lot about life... and how as much as I miss the trail, I don't want to let the days I have here pass waiting and wishing for something else.  I miss the woods... but they aren't gone forever. 

I'll be back there. 

For now I don't want to forget to embrace these days...

Life is beautiful if challenging and today is a gift.  I've said a lot that I wanted to remember to embrace THESE days, wherever THESE days happen.  SO today, in Ohio... I am thankful.