Happiness is a choice

What I’ve noticed is it isn’t just people from back home who would give me a look of sympathy and an “oooh girl, you’re brave for agreeing to this” type of pep talk every time I mention where I moved from and where I moved to. Even people from Binghamton tended to look at me, completely dumbfounded, when I would tell them that I chose to move from beautiful, sunny southern California to grey, cold Binghamton. It’s crazy! I get a lot of, “but…why? Of all places?”

And I get it. Truly, I do. There are so many things I can do back home that I have to drive hours just to be able to do over here in Binghamton. There are so many different types of activities and places that I can go to in LA depending on what I feel like doing. Beach? Sure! Mountains? Sure! Desert? No problem! As for Binghamton, first I should explain that when I say “Binghamton,” I actually mean Binghamton, Endicott, and Johnson city (the “Triple Cities”) but I just call it Binghamton because really, if most people haven’t heard of Binghamton, then likely they’ve heard of Endicott and Johnson city even less. Plus, it’s just really small. To give an idea of the scale, I can probably drive from Endicott to Binghamton in 20 minutes, 25 with traffic. Suffice it to say, there ain’t much to do out here! So yeah, of course people look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them I chose to move here.

The thing is though…these are just things. My happiness does not come from things. My happiness comes from the experiences I feel because of these things, sure, but certainly not from these things themselves. I choose instead to embrace these changes, both good and bad. I choose to be extremely grateful now when I see the sunshine, when I go out on the very rare days I don’t need a coat, when I hear good music somewhere that makes me want to dance, or when I do visit a city where all the conveniences I was used to is now available. And when bad things do happen…well, that’s just life and I will do my best to see the humor in the situation. I may have some downs but for the most part, I choose to be happy.

 

Perspective

When I first told people I got an opportunity to move to the east coast for a few months, everyone was ecstatic on my behalf. That is, until, I told them exactly where work was sending me.

“Oh wait…you’re not moving to the city?”

“Bing-ham-what?”

“Where’s that?”

“Wait, hold on, lemme look that up….oh…”

And some people, with good intentions I’m sure, decided that I needed to hear the brutal truth. Just so I can get out of it while I still can.

“You’re going to die.” (regarding the cold weather)

“You’re going to hate it there. It’s one thing to choose to stay at home, knowing there’s an option to go out and do things if you wanted to. It’s a whole other thing not to have that choice and staying in because you have to.”

Not everyone reacted that way though. Some were supportive and tried to find the positive in my situation.

“I mean…it’s only 3 hours from the city, right?”

“Well…you get to have trips home, right?”

I don’t want to make it seem like everyone I talked to was super discouraging or anything like that. I get it. It’s the middle of nowhere, almost no one has heard of it (myself included), and I’m going to be there for at least 6 months without knowing anyone in the immediate area. Add that to the fact that Binghamton isn’t known as a happening place, of course people were worried about me.

The thing is, that’s because their perspective was like this:

Whereas mine was more like this:

They saw it as me going into the middle of nowhere, whereas I saw it as me going into the middle of all these places I want to visit!

Oh, and as for the cold, I guess it’s time for me to go shopping for a real coat then, right?

And I suppose I should also bring my snowboarding gear.

So yeah, I may be moving into a place without knowing anyone and without knowing exactly what I’m getting myself into, but I’ve been wanting to move to the east coast and I choose to see this as an opportunity to get out there and explore!