happiness is indeed a butterfly

a new vocabulary in my life.

My Liberation Notes (2022), Park Hae Young

I used to think happiness didn’t matter to me. At least not in the same way it matters to everyone else. What about happiness made it any more valuable than the rest of my emotions? Rather than wanting to be happy, I wanted to want to be happy. I wanted to care about happiness like normal people did, and I wished so badly I could cry, that I would understand what people meant when they said, in the end, happiness is all that matters.

“I think I'm just a fundamentally cold, unfeeling person.”

— Marianne, Normal People, Season 1: Episode 5

Even when I thought I finally knew what it meant to be happy, something would convince me that it was all a performance, that I was only pretending to myself.

It’ll be late into the night and I’ll be sitting with a group of friends. I lean back a little, and I let my smile falter because I’m exhausted but in the same way you sigh after a great meal. I’m full of love and joy and light and hope and all the other good things. Good food as well and most likely, a cup of tea. Then someone catches my eyes across the circle and mouths “Are you okay?” I lift my lips into that smile again and nod instinctively. My body knows what to do before I can think. This has happened before. It will happen again. What about me made people think I wasn’t okay? What more did I have to do to show that I was in on this thing called happiness like everyone else?

I thought happiness didn’t matter to me. So why was I thinking about it constantly, poking at it like some foreign dish? Then, a couple of years ago, I accidentally got off at the earlier bus stop, which meant I had to walk up a longer hill than usual. It had rained earlier that day and all I could think about was making sure not to step on any snails. I make it up to the top and look up to catch my breath. But the breath halts as I do. The image in front of me is the clearest image I’ve ever seen of the world. My world. For sixteen years I walked up and down that hill and not once had it been so beautiful. The smell of dirt has been the same all my life and to know such familiarity suddenly seems the greatest wonder of the world. The wind tickles my neck like a childhood friend and I can’t help but release a short yet sincere laugh. No one sees me. I’m not acting to be seen. I am happy. For once it’s a simple fact and not an amateur’s argument guaranteed to be proven wrong.

There are three rules to joining the Liberation Club:

(1) don't pretend to be happy;

(2) don't pretend to be unhappy;

(3) be honest.

— My Liberation Notes (2022), Hae Yeong Park

I’ve grown certain that I know happiness. And I do in fact want to be happy. More than I want to want to be happy. How am I so sure? Because lately, I find happiness in all the corners and sides of my life, settling into me like a spoonful of mum’s soybean paste stew.

Here are just a few:

i.

I’m standing behind the till when a customer walks into the bookstore. Most of them have been here before, they know better than me where to go. But every now and then comes a new customer asking for a specific book.

“Do you guys have Tom Lake Ann Patchett?”

I know exactly where that one is. It’s in the bottom row of the third shelf. I hand it to her, telling her how much I love that book. She thanks me and proceeds with her purchase, raving on to me about how her sister has been begging her to read it. I haven’t cured cancer or anything. Anyone with the ability to see could have done what I did. Still, it feels so special to have inhabited a stranger’s world. Even just briefly.

ii.

I’m laying in bed. It’s five in the evening. I open up my journal and start writing. My eyes threaten to close but I refuse to let go of this moment. A cold blue casts across my bed and the letters on my pin board. Why is that since coming to Edinburgh, this is the most breathtaking sight I’ve seen. A measly view of the grey sky from my university dorm. I’m reminded of my early mornings back home in Canberra, the same kind of sky that drapes over all of us. It’s like slipping into a silk satin dress. The birds chirp just outside my window as if letting the others know to look. Don’t let yourself miss it. How can something so intangible and indescribable be all the reassurance I need that I’m doing things right? I finish my entry and let my face fall into my pillow. For the first time in months, I fall asleep without fearing anything.

iii

Finally, the days are getting longer. I purposely catch the wrong bus so I can spend more time with my friends. I get off her stop, even if it means I have to walk an extra two kilometres. We hug goodbye and begin to head home. I leave my headphones in my bag and listen to my own footsteps. Why am I walking so fast? I slow down. What’s the hurry? It’s not like I have to be anywhere. Walking from one place to another, commuting from one place to another. Getting somewhere is not any less significant than arriving at the destination. I pass a little girl sitting on the step of a library with her pet cocker spaniel in her lap. I miss my dog. The air is so crisp that breathing feels like a resurrection, as if it’s only now that I’ve woken up. I’m not waiting for something or someone, whatever I have now and whoever I am is enough.

iv.

“I can’t believe you told on me to Hannah,” Dad says to Mum.

She’s out of the frame but I can hear her laugh.

“I swear I’ll finish reading Almond before you come home.”

Yeah yeah, I’m sure you will, I roll my eyes but I’m laughing too. For over a year now, I’ve been begging my Dad to read Almond by Son Won Pyung. Even though it’s written in his mother language, he’s always making excuses not to read it. He promises to me again he will read it. I know he won’t, but I’m not mad about it. He attempts to change the subject by turning the camera to my dog but she seems more disinterested than ever. I’m not joking when I say she literally turns her head away at the sound of my voice. I act like I’m truly offended—okay, maybe I’m a little offended—and both my parents burst out laughing again. My dog hating me has been a running gag for over a decade now. Jokes never get old when you’re talking to the people you love. With every shared laugh comes another shared memory.

v.

It’s when I love and am loved, I am happy.

---