Is perfect happiness the goal?

My friends are pretty frank with me, in a loving way. That’s they way I like them. When I showed the story of how I transformed my depression into happiness to my closest friend he said ‘it seems to me that as soon as you have another failed relationship, you’ll get depressed again.’ It's true that rejection is my weakest point, although he seemed to forget that not every break up has been followed by a depression. My break up with him, for instance. But it reminded me that I’m not always happy. I have my down hours, sometimes days. Occasionally I’m up and down for a week or two.

I called another close friend and asked her ‘Is there any point in writing my personal story if I’m not always happy?’
‘People are turned off by someone who’s perfectly happy,’ she said. Instantly I realised that she was right. Someone who’s struggling with depression is going to feel resentful of some Sally Sunshine who claims to be constantly happy. It’s just too high a standard to aim for – it almost sets you up to fail. It’s hard to be accepting of one’s ups and downs if perfect happiness is the goal, let alone feel safe revealing them to others.

After I hung up I asked myself ‘what have I got to say if I’m not always happy?’ I thought about what my life would be like if I had not made the decision, time after time, to pick myself up after each relapse, each bad day, and try again to find happiness. I very likely wouldn’t still be here. But if I was, I certainly wouldn’t have experienced as many moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years of happiness as I have. Happiness would not be my default position, something I notice mainly when it disappears. This then is what I have to say. It’s possible to be a lot happier if you try the things that work and keep on trying even when your mood falls over for a while. And that’s worth the effort.