An Important Lesson I’m Learning About True Happiness

When you’re seated on the same spot of your sofa for hours upon hours every day nursing a baby or rocking and shushing a baby to sleep who won’t nap anywhere other than in your arms, you find yourself with lots of time to do a specific list of things: scrolling through your phone, zooming through dozens of seasons of Top Chef, listening to something (quietly) like a podcast, or sitting in your own thoughts. I’ve done all of those while creating a permanent butt-sized crater in my sectional that no amount of fluffing can revive.

I’ve spent more hours looking around my living room, listening to the sporadic sounds of a baby’s sleepy breaths than I can even begin to count these past nearly four months. “Now I understand why people have playrooms,” I think when my eye catches the four playmats that litter the floor or the swing we have to step around just to walk through the door or the baskets of books and toys we’ve already accumulated of which the baby uses about 15% on a daily basis. “We need more space,” typically follows in my mental conversation.

On our evening walks, as we open the garage door out back to grab our stroller, I glance around across the concrete, no patch of grass to lay a blanket on to sit with my baby on to be seen.

Every night, as I tip toe into my room to go to bed, scared to step on the wrong floorboard for fear of a loud creak waking the baby, my mind jumps forward a few months as I wonder where on earth we’ll put her crib when she grows out of the bassinet at my bedside. Yes, we have a spare bedroom, but it currently functions as Charles’ home office (important) as well as our guest bedroom (far less important).

Half our kitchen countertops are covered with bottle drying racks, bottle warmers, pump parts scattered on a paper towel atop a cutting board we’ve given up to the cause. “I HAVE NO SPACE,” I yelled tonight as I was trying to prep and cook dinner while I danced the inevitable tango of shifting things around just to clear a spot to cut an onion, for example.

All of this sounds like a lot of complaining, I know, but I’m getting to something, promise.

Yesterday, instead of binge-watching something on Hulu, I decided to break open my old faithful podcast that got me through many a hard moment: Oprah’s Supersoul Conversations. I had been meaning to listen to her 10-part series with author Eckhart Tolle for literally years, never quite finding the time or attention to be able to do it. Within the first 30 or so minutes of listening to episode one, I was already reassessing how I approached things in my life.

You see, I have a VERY bad habit of living for tomorrow. Writing off my “now” in place of what’s to come. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism but it’s also pretty self-destructive. It leads to me never quite being grateful or satisfied with what’s directly in front of me.

Anyhow, Eckhart started talking about how living in the present, in the immediate moment, was the key to unlocking true contentment. Don’t worry about what has transpired, and don’t worry about what’s ahead of you. A task that feels downright impossible for someone like me.

But instead of shrugging off the teachings I volunteered myself to listen to, I decided to stop and think about it. What was I missing at that very second ruminating about some hypothetical larger living room of a hypothetical larger home one day down the line? I looked down instead and studied my baby’s eyelashes. They’ve grown so much since I last noticed them. I smiled. Stroked her feather-soft plump cheek and immediately regretted it as she stirred a little. Please don’t wake up yet from your nap. Momma needs a break.

From there, I went through the mental exercise of acceptance. Acceptance of my current place and time. Of what’s directly in front of me and what I’m currently living with. Rather than thinking forward to a time when I’ll have a backyard and a barbecue and a home office in addition to a nursery, I thought of how much spotting the hummingbirds zipping around our front window makes me smile. I’ll miss that one day. How I always dreamed of living in a home with as much character as I do now. Sure, my bedroom has exactly two outlets, but my dining room has coved ceilings, okay?!?

What if instead of thinking about all the things I don’t have, I focus on what I do have instead? So simple, I know. But so easy to not do.

Maybe one day, my windows will actually be energy efficient and keep out the cold and the heat, but maybe they won’t be beautiful casement windows from the 1930s. Maybe I’ll have a swing set for my daughter and an outdoor dining area, but I won’t be able to see the little boy next door busying himself making a pulley system from old cardboard boxes for the tree out front. Or the neighborhood dogs Rooney and Beau and Phoenix on our walks. Or the guy at the corner who sells seasonal fruits like cherries and cut-up mangos. Maybe I’ll have an actual driveway to park in to make unloading significantly easier, but I won’t be within walking distance of a large park with a food window I just recently discovered that’s an offshoot of a great restaurant up the road. Or the coffee shop in the medical building across the street that actually has good food.

There’s a lot that I already have. I have everything, really. And while life changes, and we acquire more or less or different things, I have to remember to stop and appreciate where I am at that very moment. It all changes so fast. For now, I’ll remember to sit at the bench by our front window with my daughter, looking out onto the swaying palm fronds and the hummingbirds and the occasional spider that makes its home (unfortunately) in the outer crevices of our windows. I’m exactly where I need to be for this exact moment in my life. Whatever comes next will come. I need to get better about realizing that and knowing that today is tomorrow’s yesterday.

Repeat after me: today is tomorrow’s yesterday. Today is tomorrow’s yesterday.

See you soon, FOAS.