The pursuit of happiness

“Are you happy?”

I was recently asked, and answered with “Yes, I am happy”

“But why are you happy?”

My simple answer was, “I’m happy because nothing is wrong with my life, everything is good.”

“But there’s a difference between being happy and content! You’re content!”

“No” I answered, as I was looked at with disbelief.

While this person did not really care about my justification and I did not care to explain, as I did not want to start a discussion, how ever, it made me think about how I, myself, defined happiness only a year ago.

I believe that large part of what makes us unhappy is that we don’t accept that being content should make us happy. For many years I myself was on the pursuit of happiness.

But why?

If I looked at what I had in my life I could have been happy right then and there, but I was always searching for something more and feeling sorry for myself, after all, I thought my life was so unfair.

Of course we all have things that have happened to us that make us sad, and thinking about them still might make us sad, but if we just take a minute to think about everything we do have in life we see that we have so much.

One of my favorite quotes is by the philosopher Laozi:

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.

When you realize there is nothing lacking,

the whole world belongs to you.”

I try to live my life by this. I have not had the easiest life, but I have in no way had anywhere close to a hard life. Dwelling on what I have gone through will not get my anywhere, I instead try to think about how fortunate I am in this moment. I think about the people in my life right now, not the ones who are no longer a part of my life, or the ones who are “only” there in spirit. And I put the word “only” in quotation marks, because I no longer see that as something limiting, they are still a part of my life whether that is in person or not.

So I am happy. Happy that I can go to university, that I have a mom and two sisters, that I had 18 amazing years with a loving father, that I have great friends, how ever far away they may live and that I am alive and able to enjoy every day that I have, because these things are not a right, they are a gift, something I cherish. I am content, and therefore I am happy.

I don’t need to chase after an unobtainable happiness. Why? Because once I get there I just find something else that I would define as my key to happiness. It may have taken me a while to understand this, but now that I do I feel great, I feel content, I feel happy.

Happiness does not revolve around having something no one else has, money, a partner, or all the material things that I wanted. Happiness to me is just realizing that there is nothing lacking. Everything else I will receive is a bonus, but it will not let it define my happiness.

I am happy.