Interesting word. Seems to be the one thing that every person wants to find, achieve, create, develop, transcend… happy.
A synonym of happy is, “untroubled” (Untroubled sounds like a nice place to be.) A definition of happiness is, “a pleasurable or satisfying experience.” The definition states it to be an “experience.” Experience is defined as, “the conscious events that make up an individual life.” Event is defined as, “a noteworthy happening.” A way we tend to go wrong is believing that happiness must be a complete lifetime-long linear achievement of daily living. We almost feel like we’re failing in the happiness department if we don’t experience this continual event every day of our lives.
Happiness is an event
There are certain moments in time that we feel untroubled. To achieve this linear happiness would mean to achieve a lasting state of being untroubled. No matter your belief, we can all agree that trouble is as constant in life as is happiness.I also think we go wrong in our pursuit of happy because we believe that it must and can only be achieved in the absolute absence of pain. The human experience is one of pain. Pain in child birth, growing pains as we progress through adolescence, aching backs as we age, etc.
Pain is part of the process. Not many mothers are in a state of happiness, as defined by a pleasurable or satisfying experience, while in the midst of thirty plus hours of labor. But without that experience, they would be without the experience of seeing their baby smile and light up when mommy comes into the room.
The sooner we learn to live with the fact that pain, happiness, sorrow, excitement, let-down, disappointment, and joy all exist at the very same time, in a single event or experience called, The Human Experience, then that will be the sooner we experience happy.
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