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Choose Happiness

I was shopping at Claire’s Boutique last weekend with the kids. Claire’s Boutique is like the At Home for children. My kids love spending at least an hour in the store, browsing all of the glittery, sparkly plastic items made in China. They get excited about the buy three get three free offers and the six dollar grab bag with surprise items in it. They wander, basket in hand, looking at every item from top to bottom, reviewing each display, sometimes many times, to make sure that they don’t miss seeing anything.

I have a tolerance for Claire’s for about 20 minutes, depending on how many other people are crowded into the tiny, very cluttered store. I can't lie, every once in a while something actually catches my eye for myself, like a cute pair of plastic rhinestone earrings or a purse shaped like a pug head.

During this last shopping trip, while the girls were deciding between fake hair ponytail attachments or Beanie Boo dolls, I saw a display marketed to the preteen set. Paired together was a journal and a water bottle. The background was pink and blue with some glitter, and in gold, cursive lettering was written two simple words:Choose happiness. I picked up the journal, flipped it from front to back in my hands and felt a sudden urge to throw the journal across the room. Of course, I knew doing so would get me kicked out of Claire’s and then in trouble with my children and I would never be allowed at the mall again so instead, I placed the journal back on it’s display case and stared at it for several minutes.

As a frequent shopper of the adult version of Claire's-like stores like At Home or Hobby Lobby I am very familiar with cheap home decor with inspirational quotes on it. I even actually have a few that I’ve purchased. I connect with words, and as a teen, before these home decor items were even in existence, back when Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper‘s were still cool, I started keeping a journal of sorts with quotes not pulled from cheesy wall hangings made in a factory, but instead from books that I had been reading. I truly believe in the power of words and that something as simple as a statement made by somebody else can carry you through a hard day or inspire you to do something but you’ve been afraid of doing. Words have always mattered to me.

So these particular words, Choose Happiness, stuck with me all weekend. These two words have ruminated in my head over and over and over. First, it got me thinking about why these inspirational quotes and slogans are marketed to females. Is it because of the belief that women connect more with words whereas men are more visual? I’m not sure I really believe that but it is sort of a common myth. Speaking of myths, is it because females struggle with confidence and their emotions and therefore we buy things that we can put around the rooms in our homes to constantly remind us of the mindset we aspire to? Or perhaps a mindset that we are told to aspire to? Choose happiness because the alternative is unacceptable.

And that’s what gets me to the thing I’ve been considering for the last week. Those two words, on that glittery journal, in the tchotchke shop marketed towards little girls, is sending me a very clear message: happiness is a choice and we have control over our happiness.

So, if you’re 15 and you’re struggling with anxiety or depression and you walk into that store and you read those words on that journal or that water bottle or a key chain or wherever else it's plastered among rhinestone earrings and stuffed animals, you’re getting a really clear message: the way you feel, and your thoughts, are always under your control. And if you’re 15 years old and you haven’t been happy, and you’re not sure how to be happy even though you've tried, and you read this quote on this journal, it's telling you that it’s really simple. All you have to do is choose happiness and everything will be great.

Just buy a headband with a unicorn horn and a backpack with pugs on it from Claire’s boutique and choose damn happiness and go on with your life and shut up about it. You might as well learn young that life is a series of choices and one of them is being happy.

What if you’re 40 and you go to Claire’s boutique, and you see that journal and those gold glittery curse words staring at you, and you think to yourself, God, it’s just one more thing that I fucked up because I was supposed to choose happiness and I haven’t done a very good job at it. And then like all 40-year-old moms do, we put it on the checklist of things to do, along with eating better, being a better parent, drinking more water, reading that book on how to be a kick ass boss, watching that YouTube video on meditations for moms, and buying that recipe book on 30 minute healthy meals that will satisfy the entire family.

What if you’re 40 years old, and you're standing in a Claire’s boutique, surrounded by plastic garbage you're going to spend money on that you don't really have because you're worried you're a bad parent and you'd rather spend 40 bucks on crap than listen to your kids bitch, and you’re thinking that you just spent the last 15 years spinning and spinning and spinning and raveling yourself into this tightly protected and put together person who has suddenly realized that, of late, she's slowly unwinding the other way, and unraveling and all the layers of protection and perfection are slowly coming apart and you think GEEZ! if only I’d realized the answer to my mid-life crisis was in front of me all along, on this purple and pink glittery journal in a store that sells Chinese plastic hair items and jewelry.

Choosing happiness is as easy as choosing your three free items after you buy your first three. Choosing happiness is a simple as choosing between poop emoji studs or smiley face emoji studs.

Well, FU Claire's and all other retailers who push this bogus, positive thinking bullshit in our faces. Yes, we are the keepers of our destinies and we are responsible for our choices and we can be more grateful about what we have, but we can't always choose happiness. Sometimes, we want more than anything to be happy but we don't know how, and no amount of gratitude journaling or fake-it-until-you-make-it-ing, or meditation or medicine is going to help you make a choice to be happy. Being happy isn't the same as choosing between chocolate or vanilla ice cream or whether to go to the Cape or Nantucket for vacation. Happiness is an emotion or a feeling, it comes and goes like all other emotions and feelings.

Claire's needs to take a class. People have been studying happiness for a long time and there's some cool, new information about happiness out there that strikes a balance between happiness as emotion or a choice. This article gives a nice summary of some of the ideas. Happiness is action-oriented coping skills. Happiness is that moment when you are super engaged in something that leaves you energized and excited-aka flow.

I'm never going to buy a water bottle that says Choose Happy but I might buy a glittery bottle that says, Do Something That Makes You Happy or, Hope You're Happy Today, but what I'd be most likely to buy, and the saying that I'll tell my girls every single day from now until eternity is a bottle that says, You Won't Be Happy Every Single Day and It's Going to Be Shitty A Lot and That's OK and I Will Always Love You.

So, put that on some of your plastic crap, Claire's, and you've got my twenty bucks.

There's so much out there on positive psychology, but you can start with this guy, if you want.

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