by Mary Essiet                                                Nigeria                                             03.11.2024

The other day, I woke up really excited. I had beautiful plans for the day and held my head high as I imagined how gracious it would be. I went through my morning routine and set out to accomplish my goals for the day. Then I checked my mail. Thinking about it now, that wasn’t a good decision, as it drastically changed my mood. I was anticipating an acceptance email from one of the companies I had applied to. But guess what I got instead? A rejection email—you guessed right. The funny thing? They didn’t even use the usual format of appreciating one’s skills and expressing how much they wished they could work with me but couldn’t due to limited vacancies. No, they didn’t. It was an outright “you’ve not been selected.”

Anyway, I kept hope alive and boarded a taxi to work, only to arrive and realize that I had left an important document in the taxi—probably out of hurry. I reached out to the driver, and he promised to bring it back, but only much later in the day. I could manage since I was only working half a day.

As if that wasn’t enough, I slipped just as I was about to enter the banking hall, and my phone screen cracked badly. I only wanted to resolve an issue with a failed transaction I had over the weekend and maybe withdraw my “urgent 2k” to spoil myself because the day was definitely not going according to plan. How bad could a day be?!

Then, I remembered the popular saying: “happiness is a choice.” I did choose happiness that day, but given everything that had happened, could I keep up with that choice? Wouldn’t that be chaotic, as I’d only end up piling up my feelings for when I could no longer hold back? Well, as happiness wasn’t choosing me, I let myself feel all the emotions of that day but did so patiently and compassionately.

Forgive me for boring you with these details just to say: feel what you feel when you can feel it because happiness may be a choice, but it’s not a simple one. In some circumstances, this choice becomes unhealthy. But imagine if I barged into your room telling you that happiness may not be a choice after all; you’d instinctively begin to argue, and I didn’t want that for either of us. Bear with me, my love. Until next time.