I overheard someone telling another person in line recently that there is no such thing as happiness. “It’s not a state of being,” they went on, “it’s a passing emotion like any other – like a breeze in the wind, here one moment, gone the next.”How sad, I thought.
Then I asked myself, “Are they right? What if they’re right?” I was having a really downer week, to be honest. It was easy to agree.
But no! I thought after a considerable amount of pondering. They’re not right. They can’t be. They’re missing the point!
Happiness is not about endless blissfulness, rainbows & butterflies. Happiness actually feels sadness, frustration, elation and every other emotion.Consider the saints that work in something like hospice care, or a cancer hospital, or child services. They experience sadness at levels most of us mere mortals can’t comprehend, and yet those that I have met are often some of the happiest people I have encountered. Happiness is less an emotion and more a state of mind; more specifically, it is a state of awareness. And this is key:Happiness is what you bring to things/people/life/circumstances; not what you take away from them.Happiness doesn’t preclude the difficult, the sad or the negative. It is what allows those other things to be carried away on the breeze. Happiness witnesses emotions and experiences, and then moves on to whatever is next.Like the stock market, you can’t monitor your happiness by the minute – I’m happy, I’m not happy, I’m happy, I’m not happy, I’m happy, I’m not happy – man, that would drive anyone insane! Instead, take a long-term view of happiness.Check in occasionally and ask the question: is your overall happiness climbing or falling? How would you know? Try these check-in questions:
- What’s your overall state of being? Is it more positive than negative?
- Do you feel joy more often than not?
- Do you find yourself dwelling on negatives, like fear and doubt, or do you allow yourself to be educated by them so you can move on and make more empowering choices?
- Are you able to observe more and be caught up in the turmoil of reactionary emotion less?
Like a screen that keeps out the bugs but still lets through the gentle breeze and even the storm, happiness is a filter. Are you letting it filter for you?
If you were to somehow graph happiness like your stocks, your happiness may be up or down at any given peek. But what is it trending? If it isn’t trending upwards, it’s time for a change. Can I help?Enjoy the journey.Photo: Image via BK on Flickr. Original photo by Harry Cooper. Image use protected under the Creative Commons License.
