I don’t know what happiness and life satisfaction are, or if they’re real things, or if they have anything to do with what people answer to survey questions, or which one (if either) actually matters.
I do know when I was dating him I was happy, I think? If you had pinged me at random times and asked how I was feeling, in that moment, I would have usually said “pretty good,” and I have the data to prove it.
I also know that if I started to cross the street without looking and a bus whooshed by me, I felt … nothing.
And last week on a night when I was sobbing so hard I was hyperventilating, I went to take some ibuprofen for my headache and looked at the pills sitting in my hand and felt panic. I had forgotten how scared I used to be of swallowing pills and now all I could think was what if I choke and die right now there’s still so much more I want to do
Maybe when I answer how happy I am, it’s relative to a recent average. Sometimes I wish I could remember better what I normally felt like during some period of my life. It’s a surprisingly hard thing to remember. Maybe I’m answering how happy my model of myself says I should be in that moment, or any one of a million other questions.
Maybe “life satisfaction” is partly a way to get information about my happiness that’s below my conscious awareness. What does happiness mean if it’s not something I’m consciously aware of?
I do know I wouldn’t go back for anything in the world.