Are You Happy?

I find that most people struggle with this question because most cannot honestly answer it. For such a simple question it certainly can keep most people up at night. For some, it creates doubt within themselves, within others, and the world. What does happiness mean to you? We often go through life not stopping to reflect and understand what this means to us, let alone seeking answers to it. The rare moments that we do lend it a passing thought…it is exactly that…passing and fleeting. What we cannot answer, we tend to find it easier to ignore.

You can spend the most wonderful day with someone or experience something so great, at one point you could genuinely say to yourself you are truly happy. If only life could be like this every day, one would die a very happy person. When life seems unbearable and at times suffocating, we look to those happy memories in our lives for refuge -- to make life a bit more tolerable with the hope that maybe, if you're lucky, you can experience that happiness again. You can never recapture the past and we are too busy running around on a day-to-day to remember what once made us happy, if at all ever. Taking time out for a little introspection is an inconvenience. Given enough time we become desensitized to everything and you forget your “self”. We conduct our lives without thought, without feeling, and essentially without meaning. We are used to functioning in our non-thinking, non-feeling mode, going through life doing things we are "supposed" to do, keeping up with the race to survive. What are we trying to save ourselves from exactly? It appears we are trying to survive and save ourselves from each other because we are all in a mad frantic rush for something at the end of the treadmill.

When you’re around people that are just like you, running on the same treadmill for years it becomes a reality of life and that's the only life you know. You cannot imagine it being any other way. Are we merely socialized to run the race and just accept it? We create our own reality and world wherein we produce a whole bunch of stuff, promoting mass consumerism by placing value and importance on them. We begin to equate happiness with material objects. He who has the most and shiniest things...surely must be the better person and the happiest, right? So we compete in the race, chasing after material wealth and stuff, and more stuff. We are reduced to a bunch of squabbling, clawing, and hoarding pack rats. If these things brought happiness, why are we compelled to replace them so frequently? When is it ever enough or good enough? Then years pass by and you're still running, but now you're not too sure what you're chasing after anymore or why. You begin to realize you are no better off now than when you started, except now you own a lot of crap. But none of those things brought you any of the happiness you thought they would. You are alone with just your "self" again, but now you are older and worn from the race. You feel lost and wonder where did all the time go. All the things you've collected all begin to disintegrate before your eyes. What's left is just you and what do you find? The same familiar and unbearable void that has always been there. To borrow a line from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, “no matter where you run, you will always run into yourself…”

Surely, we need material things and income to sustain our livelihood. However, it cannot be a good thing if it comes at the expense/sacrifice of your “self” and what truly brings happiness to your life. You are human before you are anything else. You are lost, with no real purpose or meaning, looking to empty things for answers but to only find yourself staring back, at you. It’s an incredibly lonely place. An author wrote, “happiness is not wanting what you do not have, but wanting what you do have…” appreciating the simple things in life that have no monetary value. Happiness as you may have once faintly remember, are those forgotten memories of genuine joy that were shared and experienced through human connections. It’s not about chasing after these connections but appreciating them as they trickle into your life for however long or brief they may be. It is through human bonds and sharing that our soul and spirit is nurtured and enriched by. These connections bring a unique experience, a humbling understanding that cannot be manufactured, produced for purchase, learned through books or any material medium, and cannot be taken away from you. It is the pain, the joy experienced -- all braided together to make up what is life. A well lived happy life is not forgetting to be human, to cry, to laugh, to love. It's the consistent nurturing of each others soul and the heart that will open us up to give and receive unconditionally and infinitely. That is what happiness is, that is what life is worth living for.