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I Took the #100daysofhappiness Challenge

Broken down to the most basic common denominator, I'm happy that I wake up every day, as do my loved ones, in North America, healthy and educated, with a roof over my head, a comfortable bed to sleep in, clean water to drink, uncontaminated food to eat, and having the freedom to pursue any goal I set for myself.
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As I write this, I'm a willing participant on the eve of day 45 of the #100daysofhappiness movement on Twitter. When I first embarked on this journey, without doing any due diligence into its raison d'etre, simply relying on my own common sense that it was about promoting people to focus on the reasons to be happy in life, I thought, how hard could it be to find something to be happy about every day?

I'm a pretty simple person, and I like to think a happy one too. Although I love art, being exposed to culture, eating good food, traveling, and enjoying new experiences and nice things, I'm not a high maintenance person and it doesn't take much to make me happy. Not that there's anything wrong with being high maintenance -- à chacun son goût.

I don't need to go out to fancy restaurants with any regularity, jet set on expensive trips, wear fancy designer clothes, or be lavished with gifts by my spouse for every occasion or for no reason at all. I figured I could find an endless array of reasons to be happy that I could tweet about on a daily basis. I read other people's posts, most of which revolved around stopping to smell and be grateful for the beautiful birds and butterflies, family members, health, and having a roof over their heads -- thinking "well everyone is obviously happy for those things, who's going to want to read more of the same?" So, I challenged myself to find more obscure items to spotlight, ones that lurk in the shadows, which will make my #100daysofhappiness have that much more meaning.

Each time I sat down to compose my daily tweet, which was usually closer to the evening, I found myself struggling to figure out what I'm happy for besides the mundane things for which everyone is happy. To add to my happiness writer's block, inevitably something would have gone sideways during a given day since the challenge began. I am a mom of a toddler and baby, lest we forget, also a wife. I'd feel impotent, pondering aloud whether I had anything to be happy for. My days are regimented, filled with singing, reading, playtime, spit up, multiple feeds, and even more diaper changes, as I count down the minutes until nap time arrives and I can write or do book promotion for my novel, Deathbed Dimes, which came out a month ago.

On top of the daily grind of maternity leave, I've also been contending with family private matters that everyone has to deal with, eating up more of what could otherwise be counted as 'me' time. I wondered if I could simply alternate my #100daysofhappiness tweets daily with the same rigmarole of being happy for naptime and writing. I convinced myself that the simple things we take for granted wouldn't meet the goal of the #100daysofhappiness challenge.

Did I have anything rock star worthy at all? I had nothing that would outshine the cowboy boots one person bought for their kid, or the magical picnic date another tweeted about that their spouse surprised them with. I kept feeling like I had to find a way to make my happy out-happy everyone else's. So, I struggled to look past having a dying grandmother, a baby who sliced open his finger on a Coke can, a toddler with a wicked double ear infection, a husband who prioritized cleaning out the dishes from the sink instead of picking up the screaming baby while I took care of the toddler, or a dog who kept finding a way out of the fenced in backyard to run away, as reasons not to kill my happy day while trying to find marvelous things that make me happy. Unless your name is Beyonce or Kate Middleton, what marvelous things happen every day for 100 days for the average person?

Finally, as if by epiphany, I came to realize that in life, per the honest words of Disney's movie The Jungle Book, we really only need the bare necessities to be truly happy. Food, water, shelter, but most importantly, our health, are really all anyone needs to be happy, and obviously having enough money to ensure the consistency of those things in one's life. Happiness is an internal state of being that is projected outwardly.

Getting a new job or promotion, finding a new literary agent or selling a manuscript to a publisher, being surprised with a trip to Hawaii, buying a new pair of Prada shoes at 80 per cent off, or partying like it's 1999 on a yacht are all reasons to be happy. But, those are all fleeting moments that in and of themselves don't carry you through to the next amazing, splendiferous moment that is worthy of a monster #100daysofhappiness shout out.

Instead, it's the Jackson Pollock-like splatter painting your toddler brought home from preschool just for 'mommy,' the giant smile your baby son gives you after he realizes he can stand up all by himself, the laughter emanating from deep within your friend's belly upon reading something you wrote, your spouse tenderly placing a hand against the small of your back while leaning over to give you a kiss on the cheek at the end of a day, or the call from a friend to shoot the breeze rather than an exchange of texts giving you a human connection, all of which and more are reasons to be happy on a daily basis.

Negativity will always exist. Sure it sucks to get a summer cold, or for your kid to have an ear infection. But, thankfully, and quite happily, I'm lucky that neither myself, my spouse, my kids, my parents, my sister, nor my good friends have a life threatening disease (and I hope never will). I decided to be grateful for the fact that I have a cleaning lady who comes to my house instead of my having to clean it myself, rather than bemoan the fact that a bunch of cobwebs are still sitting in a particular corner of the kitchen. I'm happy I have a husband who will clear the dishes from the sink and load the dishwasher, instead of being married to a misogynist who thinks that all domestic duties live in the female realm.

Broken down to the most basic common denominator, I'm happy that I wake up every day, as do my loved ones, in North America, healthy and educated, with a roof over my head, a comfortable bed to sleep in, clean water to drink, uncontaminated food to eat, and having the freedom to pursue any goal I set for myself. The #100daysofhappiness challenge isn't about finding something to be happy for on a daily basis, it's about getting us to focus on the positive and realizing that we already have everything to be happy by virtue of having the bare necessities of life. And, isn't it great it only took me 45 days (and a little over 36 years) to figure that out?

For more of Naomi's writing, visit www.naomielanazener.com, visit her satire blog www.satiricalmama.com, read her debut novel "Deathbed Dimes," and follow her on Twitter @satiricalmama.

To buy Naomi's novel, Deathbed Dimes, in the US click here, and in Canada, click here.

© 2014. Naomi Elana Zener. All Rights Reserved.

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