What is Happiness?
It’s not something you get from another person. It is something that has always existed within you and never left. It’s something that can be hard to find when we get caught up in what happiness is supposed to look like. We have been taught joy looks like being rich, famous, and having the perfect family with the white picket fence. Who you are supposed to be with or what you are supposed to do.
Happiness isn’t there, even if that is what society teaches you with dating apps and the latest trend. Satisfaction is only something you find from within; it’s part of your daily life as you feel it within yourself. You will experience more of it in your everyday life. It’s ok to have a bad day; it doesn’t mean you brush it off and put on a fake face. It means you acknowledge it and allow yourself to be.
This is something I learned through experience in high school. I was always the loner chick. I didn’t know where I belonged, which is common in high school to feel. All my friends graduated from high school when I was going into my sophomore year. I thought I had to be a part of something to find my happiness to be happy.
So began my journey in seeing where I could find my happy. I started with the LGBTQ community at my school. I would go to their daily meetings after school and eat lunch with them daily so I wouldn’t sit alone. It filled my desire to feel like I fit in somewhere, but I still felt alone and went back to my Journal that at this time was my best friend and sidekick. I would carry it with me to class, and everywhere I went. My Journal would come too; I wrote my feelings, poetry, and ideas that came to my mind throughout the school day. It made me feel like I had a purpose, and that would make me happy.
I continued to feel myself with things to do to fill the void within myself, believing it would somehow make me happy. I joined a bible study group at school that met early in the morning Thursday mornings. I started switching up who I eat lunch with from LGBTQ to those who did drugs. I didn’t join them in doing drugs. As one of the druggies told me, I was goody-two-shoes. That was the worst backhanded compliment I ever received. It was a verbal slap in the face.
It brought me back to a place I needed to be. I needed to see I wasn’t happy the groups and before and after school activity brought me nothing. I was looking outside myself for happiness, which already existed within myself. I didn’t know that it’s not something that is taught at school. It has become the norm to talk about what makes you happy.
What if what makes you happy is already inside you? It’s not about the promotion or how many people follow you on your social media accounts. If it’s something inside, it’s something that has never left; it takes going within yourself. There are so many techniques to do that today, from yoga to just affirming the truth about yourself that you are enough, and you are worthy of your happiness. It’s just about taking on what’s already there inside you.
It took me a long time to get to this point. I still have my days of complete tiredness with no idea where the happiness went. On those days, I remind myself its already within me. I am allowed to be tired, but to see all the good that is already here inside waiting for me to remember my happiness is within me, and I can choose to see it or not at any time.
