Looking for happiness in all the wrong places.

Try an experiment. Pick 10 random people and ask them how happiness looks like to them; what does it mean and take to be happy? Chances are, more than half -if not 3/4 of them- will invariably bring up success, achievement, and material possessions just to name a few. Surely these may bring pleasure, but with the pleasure of acquiring them comes the fear of loss, and with it, pain. If this is so, then what we experience when this happens is a form of conditional happiness…fleeting and ephemeris.

The fact that we go through are lives with the belief that THIS is what happiness means is systemic. Think about the times in which you grew up; the times you acquired all the elements that make up your current idea of what happiness is. You will notice that our parents, and their parents’ parents taught us everything about life BUT how to be ourselves -despite what others might say, to know ourselves, to be happy with ourselves. We walk around being who others want us to be -with little to no regard for what we want, stay with people we don’t really want, and do what we don’t want. We live our lives this way because we are afraid to leave the comfort and familiarity of what we know and depend on, afraid to suffer, afraid to not be alone. And while the topic of the angst of loneliness is often brought to the forefront, I have to ask: why are we so terrified about being with ourselves? What makes us so terrible that we would run away every chance we get to be with ourselves? This is the root of our impossibility of becoming and staying happy, and with it goes a lack of consciousness, a dormant mind.

You are feeling at times in pain because for some reason, nothing or nobody is able to fulfill you…is that the others’ responsibility though? When you think of love and the things you do to get it and keep it, what comes to mind? Jealousy, manipulating the other, demanding and giving conditions, the thought that you must be tied to the other person because if not, love and happiness will both go down the drain. How do we put so much responsibility on the other person and still be able to call it love?

When the time is right, take a honest look in the mirror and observe how you live, love, and get happy. Open your mind and see what needs to change, and remember you are always there for yourself, you only need to give yourself the credit you deserve. It’s in you not outside of you!