A Hundred Words for Happiness

What is Happiness?

by Sofia Karin Axelsson

Here is a brief experience that opened my eyes to a hundred words for happiness.

Some time ago, I found myself in the uncomfortable situation of being overwhelmed, stressed, and still persistently trying to do too many things at the same time. Ambivalent feelings, grand, creative impulses, but nothing created, in combination with stress over a thousand details that just had to fall into place, had brought me to a state of light frenzy. My solar plexus was spinning on overdrive, while my mind was building plans, that fell apart as soon as they were about to be put into place. You know how it is. We all want to be so sane, cool, and behave as those white-clad people in the commercials; or at least be a little closer to the easygoing people who grow fresh oregano in the kitchen, always know what to say, and smile as if nothing really bothers them. But so often we find ourselves being everything but. Life circumstances, worries, and shortcomings take over and we find ourselves a mess. Just as I did this particular day.

So I did what so many women do in this situation: I went into cleaning frenzy, cleared out cupboards and wardrobes alike, at the same time as I did physical exercise.

While doing this, I listened to my favorite music from the 80’s and 90’s: YouTube clips played on my computer, showing the expected, silly music videos of those times. Very soon I was sweaty, covered in dust, and had spider webs plastered over my hair. My self-image, and my physical appearance as well, was as far from the perfection that is all too easy to strive for. Then, right in the middle of Guns and Roses’ ‘You Could Be Mine,’ the computer screen went black. It just died, which hadn’t ever happened before with this computer that was relatively new and dependable. I stopped myself in my tracks, and stood perfectly still on the floor, staring at the computer screen, while breathing heavily. A seemingly random thought went through my head. I was thinking:

“If there comes up a person on the computer screen now, that starts to talk to me, I will know for sure that I’m on the verge of losing it.”

Right in that second, a person did show up on the screen: a beautiful woman dressed in a red sari. In broken English she looked right at me and said,

“Let’s talk about happiness. Happiness is like talking to an Eskimo.”

Right after this surprising interruption the screen did a couple of jumps, and then, in a blink, back was the music video, with Axl Rose jumping over the stage with a bandanna around his head and his all too tight shorts. I had noticed that during the short clip with the woman in red, there was a typical YouTube logo for ‘Ad’ in the corner. It was therefore easy for the rational part of my brain to turn the whole incident into a glitch in the programming of music videos and YouTube ads. But another part of my brain could not stop thinking about what possible message from the universe this was supposed to be. Why did this woman show up, saying these words, just as I felt like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown?

It took me a day to figure it out. “Let’s talk about happiness,” she said.

But what is happiness? What does happiness mean to me? “Happiness is like talking to an Eskimo,” she said. I was totally aware that Eskimo is an old-fashioned term that preferably is to be replaced with terms such as Inuit or Yupik, but I realized that there was a reason I got to hear this specific wording. Because what is it that is so often said about the Eskimo people? That they have a hundred words for snow, of course. And even if this expression has turned out to be popular global myth, I still, as so many other people, had that particular association.

To talk about happiness is talking about a hundred different things –or more. It doesn’t have to be the same thing for you and me. Or even be the limited things that I, or you, usually associate with happiness. To be happy, and to be cool, controlled, and successful is not necessarily the same thing. Maybe my idea about what happiness could be, was the only thing that stood in the way for me being happy in my cleaning frenzy: sweaty and dusty with spider webs in my hair. Maybe it is perfectly OK, to sometimes be overwhelmed by feelings, have no structure in our thinking processes, and get nothing done, and still allow ourselves to be happy. If we allow ourselves.

A very unexpected guardian angel, in the form of a computer programming glitch, helped me to expand my perception of what happiness can be. It can be something far from the commercial, clinical, smile-to-the-camera state of being, which we so often associate it with. It can be a hundred different things. It’s all a matter of perspective.

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About the Author

Sofia Karin Axelsson runs LangevinAxelsson Marketing. She published her first book in 2013, and a second book will be published in spring 2016, both in Sweden and on spiritual subjects. Sofia has been holding courses in Goddess power and women’s self-empowerment for several years, and is presently writing her third book which will be released in the United States, as well as articles for spiritual magazines. Contact her at: sofiakarinaxelsson@gmail.com, and connect on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/sofia.axelsson.98