I was sitting at the Great Court today in between classes with Angie and her friend Andy and Andy's friend Louise and during the little lapses of fairly comfortable silences I was speculating on the different ways we can be happy in life.
Or at least during certain periods of life because it's fairly impossible to be eternally happy.

This led me to think of a group of personality types which I name Shapeshifters because of their innate ability to integrate with different groups of people in accordance to what is socially expected of them. Simply put, socially adroit.
I'd always felt a mixture of admiration and disdain for this group of people because their fluid ability to change, adapt and fit in is, in my opinion, a fascinating and undoubtedly useful quality but at the same time, all that shapeshifting makes me think that they don't possess any skeleton of fixed character and has me wondering half the time what is the true them.
Perhaps, it doesn't help that I've always wanted that quality to be manifested within me but yet I'm afraid of losing who I really am and what I stand for.

So along that line of thought, I figured maybe the key to happiness or at least cockeyed opitimism is being an emotional Shapeshifter.
Having the ability to change our emotions to fit the occasion and separating them from the recesses of the past to settle comfortably at a stage of being happy.
Or simply put, contentment.

Many a time, we find it impossible to be fully and truly happy because of two things.
1. Comparison
2. The past

Comparison has always been good in the areas of competition, where simple physical tangible effort will push us up the rungs.
But comparison in life's circumstances never did anyone any good.
We inevitably get jealous or envious when we look at other people or compare new things with old things, etc.
That old little green-eyed monster fixed in the ways of precedence-defined happiness has a way of not allowing new experiences that fall short of expected marks to make us happy.

The past is possibly quite inextricably linked to comparison because of precedence-defined happiness.
Recesses of the past has a way of holding us suspended in time that we can't quite rise up to the potential of new experiences.
Furthermore, the glorious past always looks rosy because we've been there, done that and there's no uncertainty in past.
Everything looks clear and steadfast in retrospect and in our little minds, that certainly beats the treacherous and uncertain future.

And that's when I want to be an emotional shapeshifter.
To let my emotions rise to the potential of the new occasion and free itself from the claws of the past and the clutches of comparison.
I want my emotions to change and isolate itself from past joys and sadness and simply be content.

I've always had a strong gut feeling and even though I might be wrong on the specifics, I'm rarely wrong on the big picture.
And right now, I've got a gut feeling on something that may drag me down into melancholia.

Which is why, I badly want my emotions to shapeshift, right now.