My good friend today noticed the grey cloud hanging over my head and came to offer a shoulder. She told me something that I’d like to share … she said; look, there’s a whole big world out there, don’t let people define what you do with your youth and talent, just work hard and be happy. #WordsOfWisdom.
We all know the song by passenger that says, you only know you’ve been high when you’re feeling low. Staring at the ceiling in the dark, same old empty feeling in your heart, dreams come slow, but end so fast. Only miss the sun when it starts to snow, only hate the road when your missing home.
What does it take to be happy, I mean genuinely happy?
We are all hot on our heels in pursuit of happiness, trying so hard to catch up to this heavenly mirage that is so ever eluding us, I thought I jot down my two cents about this pursuit and pose the question, what are guys really chasing? Most times the chase ends in the worst ways you can possibly imagine (fatality) but then again what is happiness?
Happiness is thought of as the good life, freedom from suffering, flourishing, well-being, joy, prosperity and most definitely pleasure. Its pursuit is enshrined as a fundamental right all over the world and occupies most of us. But what do we really know about happiness? Can we study it? Are we born with it? Can we make ourselves happier? Who’s happy and who’s not, and why? What makes us happy?
I ask myself this questions every single time I’m all alone in my green room listening closely to my thoughts. Such are the moments I find myself at a point where I look back at my life and that of my close friends and family and I can’t help but wonder is it possible to actually define happiness. My feel is that defining happiness is as elusive as achieving it. We want to be happy, and we can say whether we are or not, but can it really be defined, studied and measured? And can we use this learning to become happier?
Some would say that your happy when you have more positive emotions that out-weigh your negative emotions then you can be happy. Well I say BS to that !! that is how psychologists and researchers define happiness. Scholars have tried to understand it and have fallen short.
I want to know what the common man defines happiness to be. What are the most common happy thoughts that people have? is it money? chicken drumsticks? sport cars? your team winning the league? a birthday… child birth? what? because emotions are driven by what we think and that being the case then what are peoples’ happy thoughts?
With that I leave you with words of the great poet
“Once you stop chasing the WRONG things, the RIGHT ones will catch you. “
Teddymwas 