What Is Happiness
You know how there are those questions that you ask yourself on a daily basis? Well, one of the biggest ones that I’ve been struggling with for a couple years is what is happiness? With that, what makes someone happy? What would make me happy? Perhaps many of you ask yourselves these same questions. I’m not claiming that I can give you an exact answer to that, but I can offer up a new perspective for you to consider. I feel like happiness is something that people constantly feel like they have to live up to or have to work hard to get. Often, I find myself turning back to my favorite television show, One Tree Hill, for advice or solace through its quotes and messages. As always, I was able to find what I was looking for about happiness.
“Happiness is not a destination. It is a mood. It is not permanent. It comes and goes and if people thought that way then maybe people would find happiness more often.” It just makes so much sense. People constantly think that accumulating material things will make them happy. The truth is, happiness is not a state to be reached, rather individual moments. Moments, which are fleeting, but happen quite often. It’s like people say, “it’s the little things that count.” Friends can make you happy. Family can make you happy. Happiness is being aware of what you have in life, not about what you don’t. Anything beyond that is just extra.
With this definition, I recognize that I have been happy plenty of times over the past two and a half years, which I consider to be emotionally the hardest time of my life, thus far. I now realize there were many positive points that I overlooked because I was too busy dwelling on the negative. There are many things that I have learned over the past few years, but I know I still have many things ahead of me. Sometimes you need to experience things head-on before you fully understand what you thought you knew.
If there is one thing that I want you to take away from this post, it’s that there are going to be sad and bad times, but when there are good times, “let the good times roll.”
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” ― Dr. Seuss
