Astronomers often disagree with me on the exact beginning of spring. As a kid, I never remembered the date (March 20th), just like any other periodically reoccurring event the likes of birthdays and homework due on Mondays. For me spring starts when I feel like playing Beethoven's 6th symphony. A day has to be warm, good mood, birds or blooming fruit trees. It has happened in the past that I skipped the ritual, because of low mood despite the weather. Everything changes according to your mood. A couple of days ago my friend N quoted Werner Herzog to me. Something along the lines: a person's reality starts, where objective reality ends. You only notice that once you have lived through a number of mood cycles. One person, one city, one activity - anything can at one time be the center of your attention and source of all happiness and at other times make you question why you're still dragging yourself among the living. My little rituals, like listening to Beethoven's 6th for the first day of spring and Sibelius' 6th for the first evening snow fall make me immensely happy. They give meaning and reinforce an aesthetic I want to represent. From time to time I outlive a ritual, it becomes silly and tacky. I am a different person than the one who created it. That's fine but then some other certainty must take it's place. Skipping a ritual you actually want to do but don't feel like at the moment is a bad sign. You're shooting yourself in the foot because in addition to feeling down now, you'll doubt yourself later - you are, in your own eyes, what you do. I just came out of a months-long period of being simultaneously happy during my waking hours and feeling oppressed and tired when alone, mostly in bed. My mood slowly climbed up the temperature scale and this day followed like a Paukenschlag, a smile of endearment from a loved one, a friendly hug. The air was gentle and friendly, at the bench where I tend to sit with my gf during our morning walks, two apple trees are in full bloom, the water of the river just behind flowing smoothly like clouds over mountaintops, the woman with the Pomeranian cheerful, the lady with the walking stick, who walks faster than me and wears fashionable glasses greeting us most exuberantly. Next to the small Saint-Claire chapel a polished yellow vespa with red touches promises to bring you right back to Rome with Audrey or Emily as soon as you hop on. In a coffee shop I enjoy reading books in 3 languages, not to brag, although I always welcome being liked, but because my to-do list says so. I love reading with a timer nowadays, asking one or two specific questions of a book and stop as soon as I have my answer. It's fast, rewarding, energizing. My gf works on her magnum opus about the perception of art and networks with an artist who happens to be there. I also like being welcome and when the waitress and cook, who clearly has a crush on me, passes by I want to give her a compliment for her lentil-bowl. It needed to happen now. She had walked by once already just a moment ago but our eyes didn't meet because I turned away too quickly to read and felt bad about it. Only that I had not noticed that I had just taken another mouthful and so the effect of my compliment was - surprising. I still managed to get the point across and she smiled. My gf notices of course but I am without vice: it doesn't matter who we are to each other or if anything more than fantasy could ever actually happen. At this precise moment, that person is happy just seeing me and I want to honor her attention. It's not more complicated than that. May it always be spring in her soul! Years and years ago I had read the memoires of the pianist [[Arthur Rubinstein]]. On the last page he wrote that he was the happiest person he had ever met. I never forgot that sentiment. For most of my life, I thought so too but being an introvert, I always believed it was because I didn't know that many other people. Since I became a little more outgoing, the feeling hasn't changed. But it took me a long time to accept that happiness does not preclude doubt and fear. It felt strange, like I was doing something wrong. "Why worry, change can always lead to better things", one friend would say, "the world is bad, I don't understand how you can always be so happy", another. It felt odd not fitting into either the neurotic's nor the relentless optimist's world view. Maybe I wasn't happy after all, or secretely bipolar, or do I just mirror whatever feeling floats around me? As is so often the case, a message by my friend R cleared things up for me: complaining and fear are parts of life. We do it because we care, life is dear to us so of course we worry about change. More and more I now embrace both. Both are my truth. I am happy, days go by splendidly. I also worry it won't always be the case, sometimes very much so. I enjoy company, food, my own ideas. Then I ask myself why other people, other ideas didn't stick around longer. If I wouldn't worry, I wouldn't care. I think that was the protection my past self had built for himself. And I don't want to be that person anymore. Caring is life, it's purpose, direction. I measure my happiness day by day and it's overwhelmingly in the green. 70%, 80% good. The truth is, fear, doubts and then the general mood spiral because I am not doing what I want. From there it can happen very quickly that I don't want anything. It is something that happens very easily to me. I have this tendency to accommodate everybody and prioritize their needs. Other people will then impact my life and even if they do it with me, for me even, I still feel out of control. It can be as simple as reading in the coffee shop. I love it, the atmosphere, the energy of being outside, heck even just being the guy with a book. Yet I do it very rarely. When I am alone I am lazy. I don't do it, lose time at home and then a day goes by just okay, except of exceptionally. When I am with my gf, she doesn't like closed spaces and prefers a walk. 9 times out of 10 I'll say: okay, walks are fine too, because they are. But then I'll notice that I haven't touched a book in a month, I didn't get that kick out of research. I was probably happy, but I was not who I wanted to be. I did not do what excites me and only me at this moment. I have asked myself for years why I like being alone so much. Not lonely, mind you, isolated, shunned. I want to built bonds with friends and family, be known in a community. Some of my happiest moments have been breaks from that though. When I travel alone for months, I'm excited and living in a separate reality of wonder and learning. When my gf goes on a business trip, I literally breath easier, change the flat's interior and get more things done by actually living much slower. I make a habit of avoiding contact around christmas and new year, first, because I don't want to "have to be happy", which I am generally not in that period. But with my cellphone off, just focused on myself and my home, I'm actually proud of what I have rather than missing others. I am just fine alone. That doesn't mean single, selfish or being a weird recluse. It means that it is already hard enough to know what you want yourself, build up habits, manage expectations and motivation. If you have to incorporate someone else's needs on top of that, that might be completely different to yours, this becomes highly complex and I honestly think that I have spent more time figuring out the intricacies of this than anything I could have actually created. What I did achieve almost always was based on a compromise: it's a thing I was able to do that would not disturb the other. But if you assume that your own hobbies and interests, your work, your excitement, are the most important things, you quickly realize that compromises take time and effort away from things that would make you proud of yourself. You reach your own goals slower, expose yourself to the risk of becoming diffident or burned out, become disappointed of that self who's neither here nor there. I have the hunch that selfish people have a distinct advantage here, especially attractive selfish people. Imagine the soloist in an orchestra, the gifted kid, with good grades in a prestigious university and then a high paying job. The sole provider for a family. You can always say: only I am important to myself, deal with it. But in many situations, people will actually stick around and give up a bit of themselves so that you can be more of the high earner, the respected talent, the promising graduate, the bread winner. What's more is that you are probably also more useful to others by being selfish. You achieve more, feel better about yourself, are more proactive, solve more problems independently. I have certainly never been selfish enough. If I had my fair share of freedom, it's because I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who took it upon themselves to give me space. What I have done happened because people didn't impose themselves on me. But this isn't enough. This is "just okay", "it works". In that case you are what others didn't do. It's a definition of your limits, not your self. That feeling will catch up with you eventually. You are, in your own eyes, what you do.