Are You Allowed to Be Happy When Someone You Love Isn’t?

This is the thing that I'm asking you, especially in this relationship when it's about your child.

When did you become the happiness coordinator? When did you start taking on that role that it was your responsibility to make sure that everyone is happy or that your kid is happy? I think our responsibility as caregivers, first and foremost, is it's safety, right? We have to make sure our kids are safe and we want to make sure that they are competent, that they are well-resourced.

I'm not sure where we picked up this pressure, especially as mothers, that we have to be the happiness coordinator for all things.

And if you notice you're the happiness coordinator, first and foremost, there's enormous amounts of pressure from society that we are supposed to be and we should want to be.

However, if the goal is a happy family and everyone is happy in your family but you, I think you've missed the plot.

And it's not that we necessarily aren't willing to make sacrifices and choices.

And again, all of those things can be true.

However, it's not only our responsibility or we have to carry the majority of the responsibility in terms of making everyone around us happy.

Now, if we think about that, that pressure, there's already enormous amounts of invisible labor as women working in the modern workforce, plus just how the world is set up right now, that managing everyone else's emotions, like that's not even realistic.

It's probably one of the reasons why many of us are experiencing burnout.

or we're just kind of going through the motions on autopilot because the task is essentially like it's not even reasonable.

It's a losing task if you think about it.

There's no way that you possibly could make everyone in your family system everyone in your personal life beyond your family system, everyone at work or in your community or your neighbors, there is literally no way that you can make them all happy.

And this is why.

Now, if you take the word happy, okay, my understanding is that it comes from essentially the notion of happenstance.

And happenstance is this idea that variables outside of your control are falling into place.

And the result is that you have positive happenstance, which is likely to make you happy.

So if you think about it this way, when you do feel happy, it's almost as if all of the planets have to be aligned.

All of these idiosyncratic variables have to be controlled for.

And then all of a sudden in that moment, you're like, yes, I've experienced happiness.

And then all of a sudden, one little thing goes topsy-turvy and it seems like it's like a house of cards and everything falls apart.

Thinking about even just when I remember when the kiddos were little, having this big day that I planned for them and we did all of the things and it was hands on hearts on minds on.

I was creating a memory for them.

It was everything was in.

And at the very end of the day when I was beyond exhausted, the kiddos were beyond exhausted.