Are you happy? Are you sure? Sometimes I think our definition of happiness could hold us back from enjoying life. What is happiness? I am not certain I know. The dictionary defines happiness as: "pleasure, joy, exhilaration, bliss, contentedness, delight, enjoyment, satisfaction." That's the problem right there. Many of those words have different meanings. In other words meanings other than what I have always considered happiness. In the past, when I have been content, I wasn't always happy. To me, I think I strive for bliss when I talk about being happy. Bliss is unalloyed happiness or supreme delight. I find I can be content without being in a state of bliss. Does that mean I can be content while still not being happy? I guess it does, by those standards.
And yet, I don't consider myself an unhappy person. I am happiest when I am striving for something. When I am focused on achieving a goal I set for myself. It doesn't matter if the goal is a monetary goal, physical or mental. As long as I have a goal that I truly want to achieve, I am happier than I would be without the goal. I like the feeling I get when I crawl a little bit closer to achieving my goal. On the flip side, I feel unhappy when time passes and I have not made any progress towards my goals. One problem that I have is that I sometimes set too many goals. When I do this, I am almost always unhappy until I complete some of my goals and then have more time to spend on the other goals. It also sometimes annoys me when other people's goals sometimes interfere with goals of my own. They ask me to do something (which is not really unreasonable) but it encroaches on time I put to the side to do something else. I usually try to accommodate them, but it is not always possible to do it as quickly as they would like. When this happens, I feel doubly bad, because not only does it encroach on my time, but it also doesn't give them immediate gratification either. I have come to the conclusion that I will rarely be in a state of bliss...and I am okay with that. Instead, I look for happiness in being content. Did I get a little closer to my goals today? Then I am happy. Did I get through the day without too much pain from my knee or other arthritic areas? Yes? Then I am content. Being content is the next best thing to being blissful in my opinion. Other than when I was really young, I can think of only two times in my entire life when I was blissful... or to me, happy by my old definition. It took me many years to realize that those moments were not what happiness was all about. Was it great to be blissful? Yes. But that wasn't real happiness. I realized this when I started looking back at things I did in my life with a sense of satisfaction that I had done this or that or had experienced this thing or that. I realized that that sense of satisfaction was a happiness of a different type. Am I happy all the time? No. But I am happy often and I don't think I am a downer at all. To sum it up, recognize that there are different types of happiness. Find the ones that you experience the most. See why you experience them and then work from there. At the moment I am very happy. Earlier, when I started writing this posts, I was down. In between those times I was upset. I then went out to the park with my daughters (which makes them happy). In turn, I relaxed on a bench, saw my daughters' happiness, and then I too became happier. Sometimes, its easy to become happy through those around you. Look for happiness, and you will find it. It may not be bliss, but then again if you experienced bliss every moment of the day, you'd find that that would no longer be bliss either since it would become common place. To recognize happiness, you must also be able to recognize what is not. It took me a while to realize that. But now that I have, I am happier for it.
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