Happiness Is....

What IS happiness?  An age-old question that everyone seems to be trying to figure out, some with more luck than others.   Any social media feed will provide proof of this, from the millions of posts, to memes, to products being sold.  We are desperate to be happy and to find the magic solution that will create this in our lives.  I just finished reading "The Conquest of Happiness" and found it to be quite interesting as it approached this very question from both sides - causes of unhappiness first, and then the many different aspects of life that can provide happiness.  The following line summed it all up for me quite nicely  "The happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life."  I do believe that this is the root of where we can each determine what our own happy life will be.  I like the idea of equating it to "the good life" as we all have different ideas of what that means.  For some, it is a life that is rich in wealth and for others that wealth comes from experiences and relationships that make up our lives.  For some it is all about experiences and things that we can post on social media and share with the world.  For others those experiences are the ones that bring joy to us and those around us, and aren't necessarily being shared except with those who are there in the moment.  More and more I feel like taking time to really evaluate just what the good life means and then finding ways to incorporate those opportunities into our days is such an important exercise to undertake.  This is not in an attempt to be happy all the time, as I do not believe that is possible regardless how hard you might try.  What it does do is allows us to take some control over our days where we can help to shape the energy and outcome of what we experience.  It also enables us to stop looking to others to make us happy, to take back the responsibility for this.  Even just a sense of having that ability can be enough to swing the pendulum sometimes. 

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