Why Happiness is Scary

There is something comforting in yearning. Perhaps it’s our background, our culture, or our constant bombardment from media of what we should yearn for. Still, there seems to have developed this trepidation with declaring to the world that we have found happiness. As though we’ll need to defend that stance later. That we may have to answer for why we’re not trying harder or accomplishing more.

Throughout our lives we are told to dream. To believe. To work hard and try our best.

We watch the television to see people in fancy clothes, outlandishly expensive cars and equally ostentatious homes. We are told this is success.

We look down our noses at the hard working, the person raising a family, those struggling to get by, making car payments and spending time with friends on the weekends.

Little do we realize that we’re looking down our noses at each other. At ourselves.

We’re taught to keep striving. We have this carrot dangled in front of us that ‘one day’ it will ‘all come together.’

Media will never tell you to be happy with what you have. They don’t sell their product that way. And they very much sell a product. They have to keep you watching. So the more outlandish (and staged by the way) their reality shows are, the more ostentatious our celebrities are, the more we tune in; dreaming of that far away life. The modern fairy tale.

Somewhere in this endless cat’s cradle of dangling carrots and distant dreams has emerged this stigma of being content. The steady stream of commercials needs you to constantly want the newest and shiniest and brightest. But let’s be clear. They need you. You do not need them.

This obsession with possession will never be filled. The wealthiest people in this country are constantly trying to accumulate more. They possess more money than their grandkids could spend and still they pursue more? So when does happiness kick in?

Somewhere along the way we’ve become afraid of being happy. That admitting to being happy in where we are in life somehow that we’re not trying hard enough. Perhaps it’s our Puritan/Catholic background that life should be misery and contrition and that peace and happiness only exists beyond the veil.

There is also this thought in the back of our minds, and in the minds of so many go getters, career chasers and the like, that to admit to being happy with our lives is to have failed somehow. Or to give up our claim to complain later. Neither of these are true.

But happiness is real, and it is before you.

Now, let me be very clear here. I’m not referring to ‘selling yourself short’, or to ‘give up trying.’ I constantly strive towards new goals. Almost obsessively so.

I likely will do this for the rest of my life.

Still, in the interim I remind myself to take time to be joyful of where I am. Of what I get to do. Of the wonderful people I am surrounded with. (Seriously, if you are not surrounded by wonderful people, find new people. There are too many wonderful people and wonderful experiences out there to be miserable.)

So I write this here and now to give you permission to be happy. Right now, where you are in this exact moment. You have accomplished something to get where you are. You have known loss and you have known victory. Look around you and reflect on what you have to be happy about.

And I give you permission, not as any sage or guru, but as a fellow human being, struggling through my own path and journey. But I have found immense happiness in my life. I have found immense sorrow as well. But ‘home is where the heart is.’ Or as Qui-Gon Jinn said ‘Your focus determines your reality.’ Your happiness is where you place it. If it is always placed in some far off place, it will remain there. If you wrap your happiness around where you are right now you can always take it with you.

There is that old saying “Life is about the journey, not the destination.” But I bet no one has ever elaborated on this particular cliché. It means that you may always have goals in your life. You might set out goals that take years or even a lifetime to achieve. But if you experience no joy from the smalls gains throughout that journey, then what are you doing to yourself?

Find the joy in your journey. Find the joy in your life and the people around you. If you need a change, make a change. Wrap your joy around you and take it with you.

Don’t be afraid to be happy. You’ve deserved to all along.