One of my favorite books is Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
The story is of a young man who is unhappy with life, and it details his struggles towards experiencing unreasonable happiness.
Happiness for no reason at all!! What a wonderful idea! 
I’ve been feeling very happy and content the past few weeks. While working through my complicated emotions about the guy I was dating at the beginning of the year, I also took care of myself. I started hanging out with friends more, and through them making new ones. I started creating again and finished my first painting of the year. I also began distancing myself from actively pursuing dates. I realized that online dating was becoming a negative thing for me, so I closed down all of my accounts. I think taking some pressure off of dating was a really good idea for me.
So for the past month or so I’ve felt … good. Work feels good. Personal relationships feel good. Teaching, writing, data analysis. Everything in my life has felt good for the past month or so. I feel more like myself than I have in awhile, and that feels good. (Did I mention that I feel good? 
)
I had the realization the other day that it had been a fairly long time since I’d had a nice, long stretch of feeling really good. As soon as I had that realization, fear and negativity popped in with their annoying voices:
“You’re feeling good now, so you know that something bad is going to happen soon,” they cackle.
“What have you done to deserve feeling this way?” they squawk.
Fortunately I’m in a place where I don’t listen to those voices as much as I once would have. Bad things happen in life sometimes, and that’s why I’ve invested so much time and energy over the past few years in personal growth!
Investing in myself has led to a number of positive things in my life:
I’ve gained tools that allow me to respond (vs. react) to the negative times more appropriately without letting them wreck my entire life.
I’ve developed a nice chorus of positive voices that sing my praises and challenge the negative ones. These voices help me realize that there are good and bad times in life, that will always be true. But, they tell me, one is not dependent on the other! Or if they are, happiness leads to more happiness, and happiness can buffer sadness.
I can be supportive of my friends who are struggling emotionally, both because I’ve been where they are (or at least somewhere in the same vicinity) and I’ve gained tools to give of myself in ways that aren’t draining.
So, I’m feeling good. I’m in a place where I can look back and see a lot of my personal growth from recent years. Once upon a time a year of ‘meh’ would have led to some form of depressed complacency. I rode that wave of ‘meh,’ and I learned lessons from it. Once I fully recognized it for what it was, I was able to reflect upon why I was in that mind set for so long. Now that I’m coming out of it, I’m glad to recognize that I’m in a place where fear and negativity don’t hold the reins on my mind. Though it’s a recent realization, I know that it has been true for awhile, and that feels good too.
I feel like I’m back on track. There are highs and lows, but everything works out in the end. I find I come back to that feeling more often than I ever did when I was younger. I come back to unreasonable happiness… And that feels good.