The Best Breakfast I’ve Ever Had: On Noticing Happiness

I didn’t give much thought to happiness for a while. I was too busy walking, jogging, and then running on my own fictional treadmill. 

Happiness was my desert. I was only just tucking into my starter. 

Happiness as a choice

In the first university lecture I ever went to, in a grand hall at Bath Spa University where I had chosen to study creative writing, a male professor with grey streaks staining his stubble said,

“The average salary of a writer is thirteen thousand pounds. So we know you’re not here for the money. You’re here for the joy of writing, and for the happiness the craft brings you.”

Forty thousand pounds worth of student debt fell through my mind, plastic money floating into blackness. Was that really why I was there? For happiness and the joy of writing? Didn’t I also want a stable and somewhat successful career? I didn’t realise I had to choose.

I looked around the room. One student, a young brown-haired boy wearing too many bracelets, frowned. Next to him, a larger man with blemished cheeks clung to his backpack and leaned forward, eyes wide with awe. Perhaps we were all too young to know.  

You can find happiness in unhappiness

In one of my first full-time jobs as a cleaner for a boutique hotel in central Bath, I was unhappy. I spent my days cleaning hotel rooms and self-catered accommodation. I lugged huge linen bags full of fake-tan-stained towels and crumb-ridden bedding through the streets of Bath and back to the hotel, where I threw them into an industrial-sized washing machine. I scrubbed sinks and picked long, wiry hairs out of shower drains. I scrubbed literal shit off of toilet basins as I muttered under my breath.

I’d dropped out of university, having decided I’d rather work full-time and make money. But the work wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. 

On the dirty staircase in a staff-only section of the family-run hotel, I would have lunch with my friend Becks (short for Reabecca). She filled her plate with the leftovers from the hotel's continental breakfast, usually a croissant and some leftover fruit, which could be anything from kiwi and melon to pineapple and bananas. She sat on the stairs below me, sighed, and said,

“You know I really hate this job. The hours are awful, the cleaning is disgusting, and the pay is honestly laughable at this point. But this breakfast? This bit I like.”

I smiled and looked down at my similarly full place of fruit and pastry. I don’t think I’d noticed it before, but this was the bit I liked too. We ate in silence. It was the best breakfast I had ever had. 

Happiness should be noticed

Years after dropping out of university, I decided that I did, in fact, want to get my degree. And so I enrolled with an online university where I could study part-time and remain in full-time work to protect my income. It was hard, at first, to give up my weekends to reading and writing essays, but I found myself not just settling into the groove, but actively making it deeper, comfier, more inviting. 

Six years passed in flow state. I would rise at 6 am on a Saturday, sip on coffee and meander into my home office. I would open my laptop, and then, as if I had been sleeping, it would be 2 pm, and Adam would be standing at the door with his hand on his hip, saying,

“You’ve been at it for hours. You know, you really must enjoy studying to be in here working like this every weekend. Do you want some lunch?”

I closed the laptop, smiled, and nodded to Adam. Before I left the room, I pulled out a pen and a bright yellow post-it note. I wrote down the following:

I genuinely enjoy studying. It makes me HAPPY. 

I stuck the post-it to my monitor and left the room. 

Happiness isn’t a destination

While driving to view a house in rural Bedfordshire, excited to pick out our first-ever home together, Adam said,

“If we spend the next ten or twenty years working really hard and paying off the mortgage as quickly as possible, then we can own the home and relax a bit. We’d have extra money then to do stuff with.”

I saw the last mortgage payment in my mind. I imagined handing the final sum to a banker, in cash, before dropping to the floor in exhaustion. Would I die on that floor, in front of that banker, a half smile on my face because I finally owned some bricks, cement, and land? Would it be okay to be happy then, even if only briefly, before I decayed? 

I looked at the clock on the car dashboard: 11 am. I reached over and squeezed Adam’s hand in mine, and suggested we go for lunch after the viewing. I knew a lovely place nearby, and we could sit al fresco and enjoy the summer breeze. 

Happiness is subjective

During an existential crisis around my twenty-ninth birthday, after I had quit a job that was making me unhappy, I picked up a pen and some paper, and I wrote the word HAPPY in block capitals. Underneath it, I wrote the following:

My dog, Chucky. My home. Adam. Mum. Dad and step mum. Siblings - two brothers and one sister. Spending time with the people I love. My friend, Shannen. Gardening. Reading and writing. Taking a nap. Moving my body. Eating colourful food. Long walks. Slow Sundays. Creating things. Engaging in projects I love. Helping others and noticing joy.

I saw what wasn’t there more than what was. 

Happiness is elusive

As I sit here writing this on a Saturday morning in July, I look at my gorgeous dog yawning next to me, and I say,

“Happiness is being with my dog, writing on the sofa, and sipping a cup of coffee. Happiness could be less than this, and it could also be so, so much more.”