Stratejoy Essay Contest – Finalist #10 – Tiffany Moore

I have a confession to make: I am a cheerful person.

I am smiley, and happy. It’s like I have sunshine coming out of…ahem…well,
everywhere.

I used to always feel bad about this. Then I started living on my own terms.

When you smile all the time, people like you, but it’s hard to be taken seriously. “Oh,
you’re happy all the time,” they say. “Your life must be so easy.”

Excusez-moi?

*le sigh* Right. My life is sooo easy. Not like yours. I don’t struggle. I don’t have
problems. It is all perfect and sunshine and roses. All the time. I promise.

Let’s rewind to the time before I decided to live my life on my own terms. To the
time when I let other people get me down. When I begrudged my own happiness
and good cheer. When I let other things, other people’s standards, become my
priorities.

That’s right: I used to wish I could be less happy, that I smiled less.

I thought that things would be easier if I was less happy. I thought that I should
be one of those brooding cool kids, the kids that always sulked around, who
seemed like they needed to go write dark poetry to get their angst out on the page.
(Confession #2: my poetry is so freaking sparkly. Think Dr. Seuss covered in glitter
with some rainbows and unicorns thrown in.)

If only, if only, if only…I used to spend my life in the land of “if only.” If only I was
thinner, if only that boy liked me, if only I made more money, if only I had better
clothes. If only I was less happy, things would be easier.

Then I got less happy. I became a grown-up. I got a job at a desk with a salary and a
bonus and all of that good important stuff that comes along with being an adult.

It’s as if I had my checklist out and was ready to make the rest of my life happen.
Job-check! Next up would be husband, then house, then child. Check-check-check.

But what happens when everything on your list is checked off? What then?

One day, after being asleep for a long time, I simply woke up. I was sitting at my

desk at my respectable non-profit career-tracked job and it occurred to me that my
existence equated to a slow crawl to death. I wasn’t horribly unhappy per se, didn’t
feel depressed; it was more of a numbness. I didn’t wake up in the mornings happy
to be alive, ready to tackle the world. I spent most of the time sitting on my butt in a
chair trying to avoid having my carpal tunnel syndrome flare up due to my extensive
spreadsheet work.

As I mentioned before: a. slow. crawl. to. death. Not a whole lot of glittery sparkly
unicorn rainbows.

I realized: it didn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I don’t have to be one of those people who hates her job. I don’t have to be one of
those people who works only for the weekend. I don’t have to be a person who
spends her entire paycheck on stuff just to fill her life up because the work she does
is so unfulfilling.

I don’t have to be unhappy. I can choose to be any way I want. I can choose to be
happy.

*lightbulb*

Then I decided to make my life incredibly hard. I quit my job that provided me with
a lovely, quite steady paycheck and great health insurance. I decided I was going to
do something “creative” and talked about it to anyone who asked. Or didn’t ask.

Everyone thought I was crazy. Who does this? It’s so unsafe. Aren’t you scared?

I felt more alive than I had in such a long time. I felt alive, in charge, out of control,
and scared out of my wits. Yet I was happy.

Fast forward three years later, and here I am, still happy, still learning, still feeling so
much like I’m making it up as I go along. Because that’s what happens when you live
your life on YOUR terms: no one has set the standard. There is no rulebook. There
is no play-by-play. You get to make it up as you go along. In fact, you have no other
choice.

And that is brilliant and amazing and freaking terrifying for almost all of us who
are in this crazy-living-big-dreaming mess. (Confession #3: just because I made this
whole hugelifechange thing look really easy, I was absolutely terrified on the inside.)

That’s the real secret I’ve found to living my life on my own terms: I do it anyways.
I get terrified and scared and want to stop, but I don’t let the terror paralyze me.
Those moments happen all the time, but they’re just that: moments. I don’t let them
define me. I make that choice and I own it.

I also make the choice to be happy. To be sunny and sparkly, and to not dampen that
spirit just because it makes other people uncomfortable, because they don’t make
the same choices.

I cannot quiet my own light to make myself small. That does nothing in service of
the world. That only serves to show other people to make their own lights small too,
and that’s not what I’m selling here.

I’m selling love, and light, and happy. I’m also selling depth, and truth, and real life.
Real life in all its glory: the good times and the horrible ones. The ones that test us.
The ones that show us what we’re made of. And I’m committed to living and being in
all of them.

I’m committed to choosing happy throughout – it is my cornerstone, what I keep
coming back to. My structure. It is my way.