Happiness
My post quoted Abraham Lincoln’s well known know remark “Most folks are about as happy as the make up their minds to be.” I wrote about our values and if we believe we need something (well behaved kids, a big home, a great relationship or whatever) or we believe something “should” be a way (a certain weight, a certain job, a certain sexual orientation) and we don’t have it or we are not the “should” than we struggle with our happiness.
To find happiness we may have to change what our definition of happiness is.
During counseling if someone says they just “want to be happy” – I will ask them “what does happiness look like?” Almost one hundred percent of people struggle with the answer. If we can’t define what happiness is-how will we get there?
What is happiness for you? Happiness can take many forms – a pedicure, clean sheets, your kid making getting the ball through the hoop at a basket ball game, closing a deal at work, an entertaining television show, paying all your bills – figure out what happiness means to you so you can take steps to live in Happy.
While rewriting this post I saw a poem on a listserv I follow. (Apparently April is also Poetry Month) It seemed to fit this post. Maybe happiness is also choosing to be OK with both the good and the rough stuff in life. This poem brought me some happiness so I am sharing the first two stanzas with you.
The World Is a Beautiful Place (The first two stanzas – there is more to the poem J )
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
