It is important to remember that happiness is available to everyone. It is available at anytime, if we desire to embrace it.
We think we need a lot of money before we can be happy and content. Some us think that we need a lot of recognition and popularity for our lives to be meaningful, but we don’t. Not that money, or recognition and popularity don’t belong in our life, but happiness really is a choice.
I’m not crazy.
I am not blind to the realities that people face in their life. I understand that cancer sucks, addiction ruins lives, and that we are susceptible to so many ugly things in our life. But the ability to be happy, the ability to smile is available at all times.
It’s important to remember that.
I am not the only one that thinks so. Take the great Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl for example. He survived hell in Auschwitz and spent the rest of his life telling anyone that was willing to listen that the last human freedom is our ability to decide how we feel about things we cannot truly change.
We are free and yet so many people relinquish that freedom. They don’t appreciate this freedom and they certainly don’t live out this freedom.
We were born to be happy and free. We were not born to struggle, but to fight and overcome our struggles. The pain in our life is not there to defeat us. It is there for us to connect to other people and to fall in love with life.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a Hollywood actress, or if you’re a waiter at a cheap highway diner. It doesn’t matter if you live in a trailer of a ten thousand foot mansion. Non of those things are capable of making you happy. You choose how you feel.
Yes. It is easier with money and resources. It is much easier living in a democratic society that protects freedom. It is easier but if you travel to any place in the world, you are going to find happy people there. They might not be able to tell you why they are happy, but what’s important is that they are.
We are free. Free to decide how we are going to feel. Free to do with our life what we want and the sooner we voice this the deeper our joy will run, and people will either be inspired by us or truly hate us for it.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@phammi
