What was, or when was, the happiest time of your life? Go ahead, think about it. A time when you felt accepted, when you were in control of all the big problems in your little world. A moment when you said, “I’m going to be fine.” It doesn’t happen often but when it happened , for sure, you knew it. In those moments you felt like you were the master of your universe. For many of us those feelings of calm happened in our younger days before we went on that 30-year journey in search of spiritual maturity. Was it your days of little league and girl scouts? Maybe it was those first years after leaving the control of your parents behind? Or maybe, the first-time cupid tugged at your heart? The next time cupid pulled at your heart. Maybe you felt it during the time of raising a family, or as you climbed the ladder of your life. All of us have been there, in a space, a zone when you are convinced all the synergy from the cosmos is leaning your way. When the labor of hard work, or love, and a series of good decisions has caused all the obstacles of life to wreck their havoc on somebody else. From the second we fall out of our mother’s womb we unconsciously begin to yearn, even whine, about our right to happiness. In short order we humans discover there is not a direct train route to the land of the giddy. It also becomes evident early on in life that everyone’s specific location in the land of happiness varies. Except for love, it is hard to think of something, in the abstract, that are both hunted and then short lived as happiness.
In his book ‘Hector and the Search for Happiness”, Francois LeLord sends Hector, a psychiatrist, on a trip around the world with the mission of finding out what, in the human experience, triggers happiness. What are the roots of this simple concept that the Declaration of Independence says every American has the right to pursuit. What part of your brain needs to be fed to deliver your body to your “happy place”? Of course, everyone has differing appetites but there are certain universal categories such as love, family, money, and status, that when injected with enough portions sends you in the right direction. Hector traveled from his home in Paris, to China, to Africa, before finalizing his trip in America. During his extensive adventures Hector kept careful notes on each encounter he had. Hector quickly discovered that, universally, people want to be happy. He came to understand that many of us see our immediate families’ happiness as our number one pursuit. What he also discovered was that people were in survivor mode, and any form of happiness was a function of the periphery happiness that comes with survival. Hector cumulates his journey in Miami, Florida, where he meets with the county’s most renowned professor on “human happiness”. The two of them agreed that “happiness” is an individual pursuit, whose parameters are defined only by the individual. You are the Superintendent of your School of Happiness. You are the single author of your curriculum.
The actual definition of happiness is: The state of being happy. And happy is feeling or showing pleasure or contentment. Happiness is abstract, and only a person in a happy state can confirm his or her happiness. It is often said that “being happy is a choice”. There will always be obstacles in our lives that can give us reason to be unhappy. We all know a person who is never happy, and they can’t wait to tell you their reasons : “My boss is an ass.” “It’s going to rain all day.” “He didn’t call me back.” We all know people who consistently have a reason their day is not going well. Life is always ahead of them, and they feel they have no hope of catching up. These unhappy people have an uncanny ability to always have a glass that is half empty. There is a small persistent group who live amongst us they decide each day to put on a happy and optimistic exterior. This is where it gets complicated. Nobody can be happy all the time. Without sadness, and struggle happiness would lose its meaning. The challenge to being happy is us recognizing our problems and finding ways to make the best of them. Afterall, it is within living life and finding ways to make yourself satisfied that we find happiness along the way. What are the things that bring a feeling of satisfaction to people? Personal accomplishment, a romantic relationship, a promotion, being accepted by your peers, or a windfall of cash falling from the sky. It could be assumed everybody searches for happiness and it can be equally assumed that ever very few can find it, let alone, sustain it.
Unfortunately, there will always be a portion of the world’s population who view being intrinsically happy as an impossibility. The disturbing events of their past do not allow them to see any way of getting to a happier state in the future. In a sense they have stripped themselves of their God given right to pursue happiness. Scientists believe that there is an entire section of the human brain that is devoted to an individual’s happiness. A place in your brain that is stimulated by triggers associated with making you have a deep feeling of happiness. “Without your health, you have very little.” Humans are taught at a very early age that good health can be a prerequisite for happiness. The road to any sort of a search for happiness starts with a healthy body. Right next to good health on people’s list of happy triggers is the almighty dollar. Some will say that after establishing yourself as a physically and mentally capable player the next step on the road to happiness is financial security. As Johnny Depp so aptly suggested; “Money may not be able to buy happiness, but it can buy you a big enough yacht to pull up right next to it.” Exactly, money is not the answer to everything, but it is hard to argue that lots of greenbacks makes the whole game of life much less stressful. There is substance in the words “money is the root of all evil” but it could be argued many people who preach this point do not have very much money.
There are the very few who walk amongst us who claim to have arrived at their happy place and have decided to make it their permanent residence. Most of us are lost wanderers in this world, searching, poking, and asking ourselves the questions: Am I happy today? Is there happiness in my future? What are the elements that need to formulate for myself to find peace and happiness? What do I need to do to try and sustain a happy state? As Hector traveled the world, he asked people what it took to make them happy. It was a rarity that Hector would receive a similar answer to his questions: “Whenever I travel and am learning new things,” “Being around my family is my happy place”, “after I have accomplished a tangible goal,” “Walking alone in nature,” “When I am in a loving relationship,” One person had a cynical and humorous answer. “I think my happiest time was one before I arrived on this planet.” One of Hectors’ many findings was that people’s happiness had very little to do with location and everything about the emotional stability of the heart. Happiness does not have an address; it can thrive anywhere but seems to have stronger powers under the sun or near the ocean. Happy doesn’t know race, or gender, it is an equal opportunity emotion. It is in the individual’s power to control his or her own happiness. Fact.
We all live together on this singular planet, surrounding by a litany of other planets, spinning around in the middle of nowhere. We are here for a short visit. It is only a handful of years and before we know it our biological clock is expiring. We are not unlike Hector in his search for the origins of happiness. We have much so much thick brush to navigate in our search . As in all challenges the first step of getting started is the hardest. The first step is deciphering what does it take for you to find your happy place. There is only one person who can get you to where you must go. Happiness must come from within, there is not one person or activity that you can depend on to sustain you being happy. Life will find every possible nuisance to give you reason to feel unhappy with your yourself and your life. There will always be something, or a time from the past, that will keep you feeling down, if you let it. There will be the time when we don’t get the girl. There will be many times in our lives that we fall short of our own expectations, and there will be times when are closest friends let us down, or even worse, we let them down. We all face periods in our life where we are absolutely convinced the stars are aligned against us. If you live life hard enough there will be times when you are sure that there is a calculated world plan determined to conspire against your personal happiness. At the end of the day happiness is literally your choice. If you have lived this life with any passion, there isn’t a day that goes by you couldn’t find a plethora of reasons to bring you down. Yes the Declaration of Independence gives us the right to pursue happiness. One of the biggest challenges of this life to going out and getting your share.
