Bad sad bitches to the left, money happy bitches to the right
You can be both, meet in the middle, dance all night
Who else is moving to the left, to the left with me? Middle fingers up, put them hands high to the happy bitches on the right, longing for the day you can meet in the middle and dance all night?
I may be making a Beyoncé centric hyperbolic joke, but nothing is funny about my lifelong struggle with happiness.
March 20 is the International Day of Happiness. The day was conceptualized and founded by philanthropist, activist, statesman, and prominent United Nations special advisor Jayme Illien to inspire, mobilize, and advance the global happiness movement. Since 2013, the United Nations has celebrated the International Day of Happiness as a way to recognise the importance of happiness in the lives of people around the world.
On this day in 2019, I put up my first International Day of Happiness blog post, Find Your Happy, about… you guessed it, finding your happy.
The post was centred around my recent discovery that you have to choose happiness every single day and be unwavering and unapologetic about it. Late bloomer, much?
Early in that post, I wrote:
When working on my content calendar for 2019 I knew I had to create awareness of this day, and I took the fact that it falls on Wednesday as a sign. What I did not know at the time is just how happy I would be three months into 2019.
I have never identified as a happy person. I am turning 32 in August and until this year never in my life had anyone asked how I am doing and I replied that I am happy. Now it is my usual response.
To which all I have to say now is must be nice 🥲
For real though, I am hella jealous of the girl who wrote Find Your Happy for a number of reasons, the main one being that 2019 remains my best year to date. Personally and professionally, 2019 was amazing across the board. Summing it up would require a few paragraphs, so just read about my epic year here and save me the trouble of recapping it. For today, all I will say is my entire 2019 was me 🤝 DJ Khaled 🤝 All I do is win, win, win, no matter what.
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.
That may be what Iago says to Othello, but it is also what I say to myself every time I think of 2019 Lwile. Feeling jealous of a past, happier version of yourself is a common form of internal envy that stems from comparing your current, unfiltered life – with all its messy, daily struggles – to a curated, “highlight reel” memory of your past. Which, true. But also, not true. At least in this particular instance, because even with its challenges 2019 was about as perfect as it gets.
2019 was also the year I had my first streak of depression and it was the scariest thing I have ever been through in a very long time and it is my hope that I never get depressed ever again.
That sentence is lifted directly from Kwaheri 2019 and let me just start by laughing because if I thought I was depressed then, I had no idea just how depressed I would be in the coming years 😂😭
You think you know… but you have no idea.
That may be the catchphrase from the MTV documentary series Diary, but it is also what the 2020–2025 versions of myself have to say to 2019 Lwile regarding depression. But the fact that I was depressed in 2019 and still consider it my best year to date tells you everything you need to know: I am not idealising the past by focusing only on the joy, freedom, or confidence I had then while ignoring the challenges I faced at that time. So no, this green-eyed monster is not a case of hindsight being 20/20.
But speaking of 2020, it started off great as my now husband asked me to be his girlfriend four days into the year. But 2020 was the pandemonium year and with it came cracks in the happiness I finally found in 2019 (after searching for it literally my whole life), before it all came crashing down in 2021, leaving me lost in 2022 and 2023. I was excited AF for 2024 as the dates from March 1st onwards mirrored those of 2019, only for the year to be the best of times, it was the worst of times. But if 2024 was heaven and hell combined, 2025 was a custom order from hell with my name on it.
Life imitates art. Or is it art that imitates life? Ama wanaimitateiana 🤷♀️ 2019 was the best year of my life—so far (please please please let it be so far) and that is why I put up my first-ever Happiness Day post that year. 2020–2025 were challenging AF for my mental health, so I never put up any Happiness Day posts in those years. Hell, I only put up 10 blog posts between 2022 and 2024. Not ati in 2022 and 2024. Between. And since I keep saying writing is not what I do, it is who I am, me not writing is the ultimate warning light that I am not okay, regardless of whether I am writing about happiness or its absence.
But there was, and also was not, a Happiness Day post last year. Let me explain.
I was planning to put up a standalone post last year about being responsible for your own happiness, but I was still recovering from the best and worst year of my life. Because of 2024, I was on a quest to find my happy (again) therefore I did not have anything to say on the topic. At least not with any authenticity and authority. So I reached out to a few people – family, friends, colleagues, readers – and asked them to tell me what raha jipe mwenyewe means to them and how they incorporate the phrase in their daily lives. For any non-Swahili speaking readers, raha jipe mwenyewe – literally translated to “happiness you give yourself” – illuminates the tried and tested good news, which is also the bad news, that you and you alone are responsible for your own happiness.
Here I am in 2026 with my third (second?) International Day of Happiness post, not because I am especially happy this year, but because this is me trying. Trying to blog more consistently because writing is not what I do, it is who I am. Trying to rebuild trust internally (with myself) and externally (with my loved ones). Trying to examine what behaviours, habits and patterns no longer serve me and begin changing them. Trying to keep it 100 regarding the grams of protein I eat in a day. Trying to run a half marathon in 138 minutes. Trying to rewrite the dynamic between me and my skin from a problem to solve to a relationship to build. Trying to heal my inner child. Trying to find my happy again. Yes, really. AGAIN. After hitting rock bottom in 2025, 2026 is my year of Ascension – by force, by fire! – and I just want you to know that this is me trying.
Pursuing happiness has been my life’s work. My second tattoo, which I got in 2011, is Kanji symbols for strength and happiness. Strength because I am the second strongest person I know (second to my mum) and happiness because one of my life goals has always been to be happy. Of course I have known happiness, my life has not been all gloom and doom. I have just never had happy as part of the repertoire of emotions that make me who I am. I found my happy in 2019 after a lifetime of searching, but in the years since I have only known moments, sometimes fleeting, of happiness and not holistic, lasting happiness.
But turns out I have been on a fool’s errand for the past six years because, 15 years after that Kanji tattoo, I now know that the goal is not holistic, lasting happiness. It is tiny pockets of happiness you latch on to. And those tiny pockets are of importance because, like everything else, it is the little things that matter.
This is especially important for me whose dominant temperament is a Melancholic. And as I learnt from Grey’s Anatomy, bipolar disorder in the early 19th century was referred to as melancholy. Which is a pitch-perfect explanation for why I am drawn to pensive sadness like a moth to a flame. It has always been easier for me to be sad than to be happy, and in this stage of my ✨Becoming Era✨ I cannot help but wonder: Have I made sadness a habit?
To make things messier, I am a Fearful-Avoidant and the self-criticism that comes naturally with this attachment style leaves people like me vulnerable to depression, social anxiety, and negative emotions, in general.
As I examine whether I have made sadness a habit – something I do and therefore something I am, rather than something I simply feel – I am trying (because this is me trying) to focus on tiny pockets of happiness, rather than chasing holistic, lasting happiness. This mirrors the approach I am trying to implement across my life, having learned I am a ‘chunker.’
Chunking is a cognitive and organisational technique that breaks down large pieces of information into smaller, manageable, and logical units called “chunks”. I have adapted this technique beyond information processing and applied it in my own life by focusing on small, manageable actions rather than trying to overhaul everything everywhere all at once. This approach is similar to habit stacking, which involves building new habits by anchoring them to small, repeatable steps.
When I try to do everything everywhere all at once, I only end up setting myself for failure. And then I get demotivated by the failure, yet I am the one who set myself up for failure. But when I chunk it by breaking emotional change and habit-building into smaller pieces, the kind of progress that actually sticks lasts.
Quick aside, all this talk of chunking is making me crave a KitKat Chunky. Lol. For real though 😅
All this talk of chunking to say, instead of trying to be happy all day, everyday – like a happy hour from your wildest dreams – I now try to hold onto the tiny pockets of happiness that make life feel alive. Some days it works and I have a (tiny) pocketful of sunshine happiness. Others I am a moth to the flame and sadness stays holding the matches. But this is me trying… at least I am trying.
Lwile the Leo 