The One

21. Whoever makes you happy most of the time, that's "the one."

This is from an interesting post called "30 Random Ways to a Happier Life" that I was directed to from WWDN (Wil Wheaton's blog), which is one of my favorites (I should add it to my list). I don't agree with everything on the list but it does make you think.*

#21 is definitely true for me. Most of the time I feel like my husband and I are just getting through each day and barely see or talk to each other. We have many joys and some frustration, but our days are pretty much get up, I run, we get ready, take care of the boys when they wake up, I go to work, who knows what happens at home, I get home, we eat dinner and say hi!, he walks the dog, runs, I play with the boys and get them ready for bed, he does his fantasy football/baseball/basketball, I do my PT and/or blog, we watch Alias and go to bed. EVERY DAY. Weekends are slightly different in that I take care of the boys more and he runs more but it's still the same. Very little time for each other.

So it was really nice to find out during our romantic getaway that we could actually spend time alone and enjoy being with each other. It's been a while, and you never know, but we really were content and happy. It was like we were checking in with each other to see how we were doing.

I realized we need to make sure to do this every once in a while; it's good to know things are good between us and we manage to keep it that way despite all the chaos all around.

One of the best things (that keeps us sane) is sharing our love of running. My husband ran a 15 mile race on Sunday. He said it felt SO GOOD to race, and I knew exactly how he felt. I was jealous. One of my colleagues at work is now starting to run; her husband runs in my training group. She's not quite at the point (and might not ever get there - we are crazy, you know) of understanding the joy of long distance running. She was telling me how her husband's marathon training is getting in the way of things like family vacations. Instead of commiserating with her, I felt sorry for her husband! It wasn't always the case, but now I understand how my husband feels, because I feel it too.

I know I keep writing about being happy, and it must get old reading about it. There's so much happening around us that is negative or evil or just plain awful. I see scowls on people's faces when I'm walking to my office; I can't listen to my beloved NPR anymore because of all the awful news about Iraq; the news clippings I read at work every day are about unemployment or child abuse; and the TV news is all about the latest shootings or terrorist scares. It's important to remind yourself that you are happy; that these things are terrible but you can only deal with things within your control, and within my little world that I can control, things are good.

One of the comments to the blog posting 30 Random Ways to a Happier Life really reinforces this:

Problems are important, or not. You can fix them, or not. The only problems
worth worrying about are the important ones you can fix.

If you can fix the unimportant ones, fix them, but don't spend a lot of time doing it or you'll never get around to the important ones.

Worrying about unimportant problems that you can't fix is silly -- if it's unimportant, it doesn't need fixing.

Worrying about important problems that you can't fix is demoralizing -- do what you can to encourage the people who CAN fix them, and then move on to something more within your abilities. If you spend time stressing over these problems, you'll lose all the time you could be spending fixing ones more within your grasp.

Amen.

*Postscript - Um...my husband had to remind me it's our 13th wedding anniversary today. I wrote all of this without even thinking about what day it was. He's such a good guy to put up with me, especially when I suffer bouts of utter cluelessness. Happy Anniversary, honey!