Happiness

I'm sitting on a bus on a rainy pre-Christmas day. The windows are steamed up, the sky is darkening ouside, too early, too early. We are hunched into our jackets and scarves, bent double. I can see the others riding with me out of the corner of my eye, crumpled and sodden. I don't know what my fellow passengers look like. We never look at each other.

A man gets on at the next stop. He has dark skin and a beaming smile. He sits behind me and I can hear the smooth roundness of his accent begin to fill up the bus.

"It's Christmas!" he exclaims, to everyone and no-one in particular. I can't see him, but I imagine him swinging his legs as he chatters on, nodding at the mumbled responses. They are not encouraging, but he continues. We are a suspicious lot, emerging slowly from layers of clothing, unsure. I see one or two exchanged glances. People look around, wake up.

"You have to be happy!"

He says this with his whole self. People shuffle their bags, look out the window, ashamed. We are fully awake now, thinking, about this stray sunbeam that has wandered into our day.

Why do we need a reminder of this? Why does it take a stranger to show us?

My stop is next. I wish I could turn to him and embrace him, tell him he has given us all a gift today.

But I don't.

I get off, and walk out into the wet evening.

I'm going to the doctor's. I have been unwell for a few months now, and I resent it. I feel lessened, deadened. There's something between me and the world. That's how it feels.

The doctor is a nice man, grey-haired, cheerful, sneezing with a cold of his own. After the examination, the doctor pauses. He says that what he has to say will be hard to take in. He says that there is nothing physically to blame, that I am suffering from stress.

Stress. It's so useless, so unneccessary, that the minute I leave his office I burst into tears. I'm not stressed, I wail inside. I am told that though this may be so, it can be an accumulation of previous stress. Sometimes it is just when you start to slow down, to relax, that your body breaks down a little. If you're running for your life, you will find the resources to keep going. It's only when you stop that you collapse.

I breathe deeply a few times. Straighten my shoulders. And I think, you have to be happy.

Of course.

So I tell myself, I will accept this. I will take it and make it into something good.

I start making a happy list, of things I would like, things that would make me feel better.

I look forward to ticking them off.