DAY THIRTY ONE
Happiness.
So far we've spoken about a host of emotions and feelings in an attempt to demonstrate that regardless of what you think, feel, or believe, you can have happiness. Today, I want to talk about happiness proper. My hope is that at the conclusion of this book, not only will you have a deeper understanding of yourself and of your emotions, but that you will come to understand that happiness is a choice. That's right--it's a choice and you can choose it at any moment.Too often, people lose themselves in the pursuit of happiness, only later to find (if they find out at all), that they were attached to the pursuit and not to happiness. We elude ourselves by looking for something external when it's inside us all along. To be happy, all we must do is choose to be happy. It's hard at times, obviously, and that's the point of this book. Sometimes it might feel like we are faking it, but that's progress. Now, you might be thinking, okay, let's assume I can choose to be happy, through anything. How can I be happy in light of tragedy and tragic events? Here I will say this:
In this world there exists light and there exists darkness. Neither is good or bad, they just are. Darkness is simply those places where the light has yet to shine. When the world makes sense, we create a way of looking at the world that confirms that good things happen and that we are happy. This is what we do in the light. When the world temporarily doesn't make sense, we are quick to dismantle everything we created in the light, because we can't have the world not make sense to us. This is where I will encourage you to stop and think about that. So often, in the light, good things happen that we can't make sense of. In those moments, it never crosses our minds to abandon our entire world-view and start over. We allow those moments to expand what it is we know and feel and we accept it, even if it doesn't make sense--because it feels good. Conversely, when tragedy occurs, we are not at all in the same state of mind. We'd rather figure out how to make sense of things that don't make sense so that we can feel comfortable again. But if we agree that both light and darkness sometimes don't make sense, then what we see is that it all comes down to a level of comfort. The level we seek in darkness is the bare minimum: either something that makes sense or it stops hurting. In the light, we seek the level that makes us feel good or feel better and we accept it. We're seeking comfort and happiness is comfortable. Thus, we can have our world-view that we made in the light and be happy and content through the darkness. What we will learn by doing this is to embrace our emotions, which also sometimes don't make sense, but to experience them fully so that we can get closer to understanding peace within ourselves and within our world.
Remember: there is light in this world, and there are places where that light has yet to shine. Be the light. Choose to be happy. Be comfortable knowing that even in the darkness, the light will come again.
Choose happy.
All of my love and light. Thanks for reading. Namaste.
