I think I can genuinely count and mention the amount of times I was sincerely happy in my entire life and those times are little compared to the sad times. Happiness is something I don’t know how to fake and I have been used to not being happy for a long time that I envy people that express genuine happiness. This has made me treasure and envy people who are always happy because I feel that if I can’t see the light in my own space may be I can enjoy the light from another person’s space.
I come online on social media and I see so many people take pictures looking very happy with their smiles or laughter and they put a caption, “Happiness Is Free”. I sometimes ask myself is it really free? Is happiness actually real? Don’t mind me, that’s coming from a state of doubt, of course I know that happiness is real, but sometimes life can take us towards a direction that we begin to doubt it’s existence.
Sometimes I ask people that are happy or express genuine happiness how it feels like and I always get almost the same response. Happiness is something they consider to be a state of mind. They also consider happiness to be a matter of choice. I love being around them because they are one of the most optimistic people on earth because they always find a way to not allow the situation or condition of the moment bring them down. I see them as people that know how to convert their lemons to lemonades.
These are just the genuine one, there are other people that I will consider their own happiness fake or in genuine because they use happiness as a distraction. In this case I won’t consider their own happiness free, because they have to pay for it one way or the other. This is the reason you find some tender teenagers or tender youths get addicted to mood enhancing drugs like sativa, illicit drugs and so on. They are trying to buy happiness through escaping their realities.
Honestly speaking I don’t know what happiness means to me because the moment I get a happy moment in my life, I look for ways to ruin it by having a different thought like “don’t try to get used to this feeling because it might not last” and it’s funny how one of my greatest prayers in life is to happy with my life without regrets. Currently I will say am indifferent about how I feel about my life, can’t consider it happy or sad but I know for one thing that am grateful for the life I have right now. This is because in trying to attain this happy life I have learnt to be grateful, I consider it a first step to having or living a happy life.
When you are grateful with your life, then you begin to find different reasons to be happy. Some ways I try to be happy is by doing a selfless service to a stranger that we will never encounter again in our lives. The feeling of joy and gratitude that displays on their face when you do this selfless service for them is a great feeling of fulfillment for me. But like I said, my mind has a way of reminding me not to dwell on that feeling too long. After making these strangers happy and I feel fulfilled, the feeling doesn’t last, 5 hours later am back to my indifferent feeling again.
Coming back to my initial question, do you consider happiness to be truly as free as they claim it to be. I feel those people who are happy no matter the circumstances they are at that time have a pile of unpacked sadness saved one side, the day they express those sadness, it will be like using a needle to burst through a water filled balloon. I can remember talking to a friend I considered to be one of the happiest people I know. It took the right question to get her in tears. All I asked her was to tell me if she was was genuinely okay. Few minutes into telling me what she has been hiding by pretending to be happy, tears started filling her eyes. The next day we met, she told me she never wanted to talk about deep stuff with me because she doesn’t like the way she felt and cried while telling me about it the last time.
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However, the true happiness arises when you start believing in yourself but in the first place, from the enjoyment you derived from yourself in related issues and in the next, from the friendship experience you have and conversation of a few select companions among your peers give you the ability to move forward in order to achieve your daily needs and desires.
So tell me what do you think, do you consider happiness to be truly free?