Happiness is a treasure that every human being on this earth seeks to find. Fortunately for all of us, happiness is not something exclusive for the minority but it’s something everyone can have. The problem is our lack of understanding of happiness which has given us wrong ideas about what really means and how can be achieved.
Defining Happiness
In my previous post, I asked different questions, which can be very helpful to understand and define happiness, because to achieve true happiness we must understand it, so we can define better what it really means, because if you possess the knowledge about something, but you can’t understand it in full, then you will never know how it works, which will result in the inability to experience it in the best way possible. For instance, you can have the knowledge of how to ride a bike but if you don’t completely understand how it works, you won’t be able to experience riding a bike.
So we already started asking questions about happiness, we no longer accept the story that someone told us about happiness as being something that can be found in the outside world, we all have experienced happiness through external factors but we want more, we want a deeper sense of happiness. Therefore, we have questions, because we want to know the secret of happiness and we want to be truly happy now and forever. That’s why are you here, isn’t it? So let’s get started!
“Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.” – George Santayana
As I wrote in my previous post, happiness according to the dictionary means “the feeling of being happy” and to be happy means “to be delighted or glad over a particular thing” and the etymological meaning of happiness means “good fortune” but how can I explain exactly what it means? The truth is I can’t, because as I wrote before, happiness has as many meanings as people on this planet, if you ask ten people from all over the world in one day for one week – What is happiness for you? You will have 70 different answers, where you’ll agree with some of them and others you won’t.
The truth is we all want to be happy but we all have different ideas of what happiness means, so every book you read, and every person you listen to will have a different meaning of it. The society in which we live, our family, friends, and our culture are key factors, which determine our ideas of happiness. We are most of the time influenced by our environment, which in most cases defines our beliefs about happiness, and it’s there where we can find the problem, because we accept happiness as a concept created by someone else, such as the idea that money is equal to success and those together gives as result happiness. And so we seek money to be happy and when we have it, we want more and that happens with many other aspects of our lives where we look for happiness everywhere else except in ourselves, and my friends, there is the key to a long-term happiness – True happiness can only be found in oneself.
“Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.” – Mildred Barthel
So you may be wondering – Okay all of this is very nice but I need the meaning of happiness, I need to know what happiness means, so I can experience it! Well, the answer to long-term happiness can be found within your heart. You must find your own meaning of happiness, you must find what gives your life a purpose, and that way you will be forever happy, your heart already knows the answer, you just need to listen to it without being influenced by external factors. The true meaning of happiness is the meaning you choose to give it, if you haven’t found it yet, must be because you have been always looking at a place outside of you.
The truth is – that the recipe for long-term happiness lies within ourselves, so it cannot be found somewhere else, and it cannot be found in our past or in the future, because is not a place where we can get or something we can find, happiness is merely a choice, regardless our external circumstances, it is something you choose every second of your life, and your thoughts about something is what makes you happy, not the situation itself. Happiness is the way you see life, we all have different glasses through which we see the world, and according to what we see, and to our beliefs is what we are going to define as happiness. True happiness is when you see the world through positive lenses, being grateful for every single thing you see, choosing to be happy rather than rely on external factors to be so.
Happiness is real and exists within you, for that reason long-term happiness is possible, and nobody can take it from you except yourself. Happiness is the simple choice to be grateful for every little thing you have and for every circumstance of your life. Choose to be happy now and forever!
