We had a departmental retreat at work today, one of those daylong affairs at a cabin by a lake outside the city with intradepartmental brainstorming, strategic planning, etc. Actually, this one was much better than most and wasn’t really annoying at all. But at the inevitable introductory communication exercise, my question was, “What was the happiest day of your life?”
I had to pause and swallow before answering.
Eighteen or nineteen months ago, I would have had a very quick and easy answer to this question. That’s no longer the case. It’s not that I don’t have lots of happy days on file in my mind. I do. And new ones are still being added, albeit not always so often as I might like. But there’s no longer that one special day that trumps them all for me. And it made me kind of sad to realize that. It also made me ponder two important points, which I guess I’m now expressing as bits of advice:
- Always accumulate as many happy days as you can. Not only is it a very good way to live your life, but it also comes in handy sometimes when you have to have a ready response to a question for a team-building exercise at work.
- Never allow a significant part of your own personal happiness to be dependent on another human being. It’s a universally bad move that you will nearly always regret at some point in the future.
I’m now going to enjoy the fact that I actually got home early tonight.
I’m sorry you had to stop and not go with your automatic response, or what used to be your automatic response. 🙁
However, your advice is great, especially #2. May we all start there and go onward & upward.