Happiness.

So many people seek it — but do we really know what we’re seeking?

My husband and I are in the middle of a search for a house to buy. This will be our first. We’ve rented many homes, but we have yet to buy one. Finding a rental had plenty complexity. Sometimes I thought that we treated finding a rental as seriously as some people approach buying!

But this is different.

This feels much more permanent. And weighty. Even as much as we say to each other that we don’t have to be locked into this home we buy forever (which, I think we’re hoping, could perhaps take some of the pressure off of this one purchase), and as much as we say that we could move within a few years… I really don’t think we will. I have a strong feeling that we will live in this house — whatever this house ends up being — for a long time.

Home.

Home means so many things. Home is a refuge. Home is comfort. Home is the place where your family gathers, where bonds are strengthened. Home is the place you return to, again and again, no matter how long or far you’ve been away. What do we want that “home” to be for us, this round — and perhaps for many years into the future? When you start to think like that, this search becomes so much more than just one for a roof over our heads, four walls to protect us from the elements outside.

How does our home search relate to our happiness — both potential and current?

Well. My husband and I have different approaches, different processes, for a weighty decision like this. He is very plodding, very careful, very analytical, very slow. I prefer efficiency, decisiveness, action. To me, it feels like he’s dragging his feet and will never make a decision. To him, it seems like I’m being hasty and imprudent. This is our process, in this big life move. Yin and yang. Push and pull. He says the tension is healthy, but I’m tiring of it.

And herein lies the rub. How much is happiness a process — and how much is it a destination?

When we imagine our home (whatever and wherever it is), we imagine ourselves happy there. How important is it that we are happy on our way to there? The tension of our different styles does not feel happy to me. I get frustrated. I feel stress. What I wonder is, will that all just fade into distant memory, once we’re in a home we love? Will I even care about this process and how it felt, in ten, fifteen, twenty years? Does it matter?

I don’t have the answer to those questions. And I wonder if I won’t have them until we have bought our house and felt happiness there. Maybe that will be the perspective I need.

What do you think? Does the process, or the journey, to a destination matter? Do you think happiness is a journey… a destination… or some parts of both? And what are ways you have found to maximize your happiness and joy while you are in a transition phase (which can often be the hardest time(s) to feel happy)?