As if happiness is a destination and “the secret” is the journey to it.
It’s a complicated feeling: happiness. And it’s hard to define it to myself or somebody else. If you haven’t felt it, it becomes sort of like a wavering dream you haven’t seen yet. But I often ask myself why my mind always aims to contract my understanding of happiness. Is it in freedom? Is it in traveling? Or is it in writing this article? Where is it? Seeking or aiming for happiness in moments when I most need it makes me skip a few steps. It’s all a thought process.
We’re always trying to skip ahead a few chapters to get to the good part. The part when feeling good feels good. The part when we don’t have to cut short on happiness just because the moment is over and it’s time to face reality again. The part when we don’t need or have to feel guilty about not wanting to feel the rest of it. And time is as it always does. It moves on just as effortlessly in the storm as it does in the calm. Just the perceptive and emotive sensation of it is unique for each of us. And that’s what matters.
So, coming up with the definition of happiness and its secret that we often want to know more about in self-help books and articles is a waste of time for me. It’s just a small part of what deception looks like. You can choose to remain cloaked in your delusions about achieving happiness as one does nirvana. But happiness is not real enough to feel as if you deserve it. Being grateful, at peace, and honest are much more important in life. It isn’t a singular feeling which is what your individual self makes up as varied facets of happiness.
With that in mind, I learned to respond to happiness by being the better version of myself in negativity and positivity. I learned to focus and re-focus what it takes to know myself even though its trajectory afflicts me with feelings of loneliness. But I will not fall prey to separating my personal experience — breaking it apart — and labeling it as happiness. This does not mean I’m giving up on the good things in life. It just means I’m refraining to bridge experience to emotion because I’m so struck by the logic and uncertainty of it.