Finding Happiness: Being Content With “Simple”, and Learning What Real Love Is | The Nice Guy Writes - Settled

Post written by Thomas Dockerill – The Nice Guy Writes

They say that love will find you when you least expect it. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but they’ve always annoyed me with their wise sayings. I’ve never really bought in to the notion of being surprised by love, and despite our grandparents and many from the older wartime generations telling us romantic tales of love at first sight, to me, it has just felt impossible to believe that has been inherited by our generation. The generation of the mobile devices that consume us, the generation of TikTok and Tinder and increasing divorce rates.

So why am I telling you this? Well it’s because I’m beginning to believe, much like the Grinch did at the top of Mount Crumpit when he was about to throw all the Christmas presents away. Suddenly I can feel a warmth inside me and a cheesy smile on my face, and it’s not something I’m used to feeling. Could it actually be that I was too cynical about my beliefs? Is it possible for pure love and surprise to still exist?

I’ve written previously about experiencing loss and heartbreak, and about the importance of learning to love yourself before you can love others. I stated categorically that before I was truly ready to love someone, I would first need to be content with who I am and be happy with my flaws. I stand by this, wholeheartedly, and I have been on quite the journey since writing that post. Not only have I travelled more – something I absolutely adore doing – but I have spent more time with friends and family, more time laughing, and I’ve spent a heck of a lot more time exploring myself and my inner thoughts.

The most important and fulfilling part of this journey I embarked upon was finding a new sense of independence. I thought I was independent before, because I’d moved far away for university and moved to a new city with no friends or family and built myself up. But this kind of independence, I believe, can only be realised after you’ve had your life flipped upside down. For me, having a truly rock-bottom moment allowed me to access the courage to explore myself further by taking myself out of my comfort zone because – well, what did I have to lose? It’s very easy to dwell on how hard things have been and, of course, scars are meant to stay with us – they’re a decoration of the strength we’ve had to continue. But if I take one positive from that pain, is that I now know what I like, what I want, and most certainly what I don’t want or dislike. I know I love my friends and get such a buzz from being around them; I know I love travelling to new places and exploring the world; I know I love laughing at absolutely anything, and I know that the world we live in doesn’t always make sense. Having to be rational in an irrational world is a duty nobody wants: but we have to take it on, for our sake and others around us. And when we finally accept that the world doesn’t always have to make sense, it gets a lot easier.

The mind – or mine at least – is an assault course full of banana skins and upturned plugs waiting to be stood on. I have always suffered with an underlying need or requirement to be ‘successful’. To reach for something higher. My standards are set so high in life that I don’t even know what they look like. I could probably write extensively about where these expectations have originated from, but that’s probably a conversation I should reserve for a therapist.

Whilst I have always had such high standards and this belief of ‘there has to be something else I need to achieve, else my life is unremarkable’, I now realise it has been preventing me from actually focussing on the simpler things in life. Now, ‘simple’ is far too good for my brain. My brain believes that simple is bad and boring, and I should strive for unique and different. The very thought of ‘normal life – job, house, wife, kids’ has haunted me for most of my adult life and I’ve been running from it. Why? Because I fear that if I accept that as the course of my life, then I am going to remain unhappy or unsatisfied, and at the end of my life I’ll think ‘well nothing significant happened’.

I don’t think I should scrutinise myself too much for thinking this way, as I believe with the advent of social media and the internet and the increased opportunities for comparison and wider thinking, we’re all susceptible to low self-esteem and a touch of existentialism. Particularly if you have no faith, like myself. I do often dwell far too much on ‘what is the point of me, or human existence as a whole?’. It’s probably more normal than I think, and I’ve read a bit of Albert Camus’ work which touches on this existential train of thought.

However at this point – and in the middle of a pandemic – I am finding that I am buying in to the ‘love will find you when you least expect it’ notion. Over Summer, due to boredom (and having more time to think about things), I found myself downloading the dating apps again. I spent a few months on there and, in all honesty, no one really messaged me back or showed an interest. Quite often after matching and sending a first message, I’d get unmatched – a tad mean! This only fuelled my cynical thoughts and feelings, and when I did actually get chatting to one person, I found myself surprised at how easy the conversation was. We arranged to meet – I was excited but tried to manage my expectations. Over a month later and I can confirm that every time I look at this person, every unhelpful voice in my head is silenced. We have spent much time together, and I still feel butterflies every time I’m around them. I would often see the world in greyscale, but now this person is around, I’m seeing colour. It’s so alien to me that I still don’t know how to deal with it, but I am coming to terms with the fact that I may be – for the first time – genuinely happy.

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
– Albert Camus

This first time happiness – it’s not just a throwaway romantic line for the purpose of a blog. I think the confidence in knowing such a bold statement comes from experiencing the exact opposite. I thought in the past, in previous relationships, I’d known what ‘love’ was, and it felt okay. It was nice at times and often challenging at others to keep it up. It was enough for me, but I still had my struggles with myself and my happiness. Now, on the other hand, it’s almost as if someone has pulled the rug from beneath my feet and I’ve taken a tumble, only to be helped up by someone who has completely enthralled me to the point of speechlessness. For someone with an English degree, my coherency has really suffered lately! I find myself genuinely questioning if this is all real, and whether Ashton Kutcher has revived Punk’d and is waiting outside with a camera crew. Maybe it does take time and some unfortunate experiences to truly recognise when you’ve found someone who can warm your heart with just a smile.

I am conscious that I want to close with a message or lesson for this. That being: life doesn’t have to be complex. You don’t have to be a certain person or reach certain heights in order to be happy. Sometimes happiness is in the simpler times, and sometimes happiness doesn’t just come from within you: it comes from finding someone who can make you see that. I’ve found that the person I am now seeing has made my true feelings come out of hiding and be okay with being ‘me’, and not having to perform or continuously keep pushing for something I can’t even visualise. Can it really be that simple? Apparently so, even for a Morrissey-style cynic like me.

Be okay with simple. Enjoy the little things. Simple doesn’t mean boring, it means happiness without any strings attached. It means truly being content with yourself and focussing on happiness as opposed to disappointment. Of course you should still set goals and achieve things in life, but don’t let artificial expectations hold you back from being genuinely happy.