I hear so many people talking about the pursuit of happiness and it bothers me. They are chasing something that they will never capture.
When we talk about “having happiness”, we are talking about having things that will make us happy. We are saying when I get the house, the money, the job, the lover, the _____ (you fill in the blank) I will be happy. We are giving our power of happiness over to a physical thing over which we have not power.
Wayne Dyer discusses the way we go thru our lives hoping that when we arrive at the next stage will as if by magic become happy. In grade school we say when I get to high school then I will have it. After that it is when I am in college it will be so good. Then it is when I get that first job I will have happiness. It is just a procession of attempting to catch the next thing to “make” us happy.
It’s never an outside thing that will make me happy. I will never be “struck happy”. I must be happy inside first. I need to be comfortable in my own skin before I can be comfortable in the world around me. When that happens, once I have that base degree of happiness, then outside things may contribute to my degree of happiness.
This understanding is something that we all have to gain individually. It’s not something that someone else can give to us. It’s something that comes as the result of going through life.
As a parent, I would love to be able to give this knowledge to my children so that they did not have to gain it by going thru the rough times of life. It is so hard watching them go thru the trials and tribulations to get to the other side.
But, that is the only way that we learn, by going thru the incident, by being present and experiencing life.
The dictionary defines experience as: 1. a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something: My encounter with the bear in the woods was a frightening experience. 2. the process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing something: business experience. 3. the observing, encountering, or undergoing of things generally as they occur in the course of time: to learn from experience; the range of human experience. 4. knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone: a man of experience. 5. Philosophy. the totality of the cognitions given by perception; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered.
It is developed by examining the chapters of my life as I go thru them.
My life is as good as I allow it to be. When I make the decision to be happy, I can be happy. Then the the people, places and things that I experience will not create my happiness. These things will become attributes of my happiness, not the definition.
Post from: Make A Change
You Can’t Have Happiness, You Must Be Happiness
