On Happiness

If someone asked you what you want most out of life, I bet you would say "happiness". We all can agree that we want to be happy, but can we all agree on what happiness is? 

 

Happiness is a universal idea. Lykke, felicidade, mutluluk, kebahagiaan. The word exists all over the World and very few cultures support one singular idea of what that word means. Some religions try to support the idea that happiness is spiritual. If you pray hard enough, if you make your trip to Mecca, if you can level out your karma then you can reach a real state of happiness. Then there is the question of only one sense of happiness. If I am spiritually fulfilled, am I completely happy? If I give to the needy, help the disabled, and support the causes will I be completely happy? If I have healthy beautiful children am I going to be happy? 

I think the reason happiness is so complex is because we live complex lives. If we are here trying to balance work, love, family, and social interactions it seems difficult to achieve happiness on each level. Wouldn't it be too good to be true-almost a sense of 'having it all' if you could achieve happiness in all those aspects? Life, whether we like it or not, is a game of give and take. You need to prioritize your life in a way that keeps you generally content. Maybe you get your dream job and fall in love with a woman who is barren. Maybe you entertain every night of the week and work in a job where you are always with people but there is no time left for love. Maybe you made the perfect child with a woman who doesn't love you. It seems inevitable to accept the fact that something's gotta give. 

So now you've made it through adolescence, you are out in the World paying bills and working every day, and the realization hits you. You can't have it all. You're in your twenties, the prime of your life, and you feel like you are just around the corner from buying a boat and retiring. All the passion and power inside you is aching. Your wants, your ideas, your voice..burning right through your skin. You separate your life and in every compartment you see good, good things but they aren't the things you want. There's no place you'd rather be than curled up beside your husband. There's no love in the World out there that will sound as sweet as his but you listen anyways. Your job has the pay, the hours, and the benefits that people everywhere are fighting for. You have it easy and that's part of the problem. You want it hard. You want dirty hands, sleepless nights, and a reason to go to work. Maybe if you don't go find that way to light your fire now then maybe...maybe those embers will grow cold and maybe you will forget that you can change the World. You take pride in cleaning the house and washing the dishes you have worked so hard for. You pay the bills on time and every penny left over is a little token of happiness. You know you are doing better than a lot of twenty somethings. But your feet itch and your house creeks and all the stuff you own is, after all, just stuff. Life wraps around you every day and says "Here are these blessings. Please, take this love, this security, this home. Take it all because you deserve it." You take it and you hold it and you try so hard to let it be enough. You tell people about the training you're doing at work, the improvements you're making on the house, the growing you are doing with your spouse. Some days you are just amazed at how great you've got it and other days you feel like you have nothing at all. 

No matter how hard you try not to, you want more and you feel selfish for it. What more could you want? Maybe no bed will ever feel right without the smells of hay bales and blackberries to lull you to sleep. Perhaps no comfort will come to you like the icy licks of the pacific on a clammy Summer day. No conversation will make your heart thump, thump, thump the way it does when you are advocating for something you believe in. There are no stretches of road that will make you feel as calm as cobblestone in the Christmas Market. Maybe it's something you used to have or maybe it's something you've never had but there is something threatening every ounce of happiness you have. How do you weigh what you have now against something you don't? How do you know if the risk is worth it? The scariest most beautiful thing is that you don't know. If you leave your corporate job with a six figure salary for a humanitarian job that barely covers the bills, will it be worth it? If you call in work tomorrow because you stayed out tonight because you think she might be the one and get fired for it, will it be worth it? If you travel across the country to attend the college of your dreams, will it be worth it? 

During the course of your life you are bound to run into situations like this more than once. I don't blame you if you say no most of the time. I can't say I would do anything different. But I hope we can all say yes just once. I hope we all have a point in our lives where we close our eyes, hold our breath, and take the risky path. More so, I hope it leads us somewhere beautiful.