STRONGER TOGETHER: The myth of “I’ll be happy when”

"STRONGER TOGETHER" is a weekly column where Tanya explores key issues. This week, Tanya discusses how happiness isn’t something we arrive at after achieving milestones, but a practice found in embracing the ordinary rhythms of everyday life.

By IMPACT Community Services Managing Director Tanya O'Shea

We spend a lot of our lives chasing happiness.

We tell ourselves it’s waiting somewhere ahead: after the next milestone, when things settle down, when the pressure finally lifts. Happiness becomes a destination, something just out of reach.

But a simple Zen koan offers a different perspective:

What does one do before enlightenment? Chop wood, carry water.

What does one do after enlightenment? Chop wood, carry water.

At first, it feels almost underwhelming. Surely enlightenment, that ‘awakening’ filled with a sense of clarity, peace, contentment, should change everything. And yet, the message is disarmingly simple: the work of life doesn’t change. What shifts is how we experience it.

Happiness, it suggests, isn’t found in escaping the ordinary. It’s found in fully inhabiting it.

We often attach happiness to big, temporary moments: achievements, recognition, breakthroughs. But those moments are fleeting. Life is mostly built in the ‘in‑between’: the routines we keep, the responsibilities we carry, the small acts of discipline and connection that quietly shape our days and how we experience them.

Chop wood. Carry water.

For me, “chopping wood and carrying water” isn’t dramatic. It’s found in the consistent behaviours that sit outside the noise of the day; the habits that don’t demand attention but quietly shape how I show up. It’s the discipline of movement, the rhythm of showing up again and again and again. It’s also the slower moments. Pilates is a gift I found when I could no longer run anymore. For me, it is the space where strength meets flow, and breath becomes the anchor. There’s a sense of letting go, a kind of stillness in those sessions that’s hard to find anywhere else. No chaos.

No deadlines. No decisions waiting to be made. Just movement, control, and presence. That space, where effort meets calm, has become my version of a happy place. Not because it’s extraordinary, but because it strips everything back to what’s real. I’m not thinking about what’s next or what’s unresolved. I’m simply there. Fully experiencing the moment.

And that’s the shift the koan points to.

Before we understand this, routine can feel like something to get through on the way to happiness. After we understand it, the routine becomes the practice of happiness itself.

It doesn’t mean abandoning ambition or settling for less. It means recognising that wellbeing isn’t deferred to some future state. It’s built into how we engage with what’s already in front of us.

Because most of life won’t feel like a highlight reel. It will feel like repetition. Responsibility. Effort.

Chop wood. Carry water.

And perhaps happiness isn’t something we eventually arrive at.

Perhaps it’s something we practice, quietly and consistently, in the middle of the life that we already have.