Ah, happiness. It’s one of life’s holy grails. But how to find it?
The truth is that we often seek happiness, like distant treasure we’re determined to find. Someday, somewhere, off in the hazy future, where the grass is greener, all our wishes and dreams will be fulfilled. Then we’ll “be happy.”
But what do we really need to be happy?
Back when my oldest son first went away to college, I had a realization that has stuck: that my dream for him—and now for all of us–was and is simply the capacity for happiness. As I was letting go of the little guy who had grown into a young man, nothing else I could want for him even came close.
So now, today, what thoughts and feelings come up as you consider these questions:
On a scale of 1 to 10, what’s your capacity for happiness, without conditions?
What, exactly, makes you happy?
How can you live your life to fit that truth?
What’s first, the chicken, or the egg?
Consider what really comes first, my dears: happiness, or the conditions we think we need to meet to have it? And a bit more truth-telling from me will take us deeper.
What’s your capacity for happiness,
without conditions?
Because before my beloved mother got so ill in the 3rd quarter of 2018, and Hurricane Michael struck as she was recovering from a terrible surgery, and her town’s medical community was decimated by hurricane damage, and she went weeks with disjointed care and then died in early 2019, I was still putting conditions on my own happiness.
Whew. Talk about self-correction facilitated by life, and by death.
In truth, I’d been relentlessly driven! Always striving, working, and thinking. Planning and assessing. Improving.
Getting hip to happiness
These days, on this side of that life crisis and its time of grief, the truth is that I’m all about happiness, yours and mine. I’m hip to what heartbreak taught me. And it’s all about love.
All about beauty, about kindness and connection. All about gratitude and wonder at the magnificent journey of life we’re all living.
What, exactly, makes you happy?
In fact, these days my new projects are fundamentals like more stretching and walking. More playing. Way more meditating. Way more sleeping! And less late-night work sessions.
In fact, I call all this good stuff extraordinary self-care, and nothing less than a new/old superpower for 21st Century success.
The journey these days
So these days I have a greater capacity for happiness. And now I say, with more passion than ever, the journey is really the destination. A quote often attributed to the Buddha is worth sharing here:
There is no path to happiness:
happiness is the path. —Buddha
Beautifully said, right? You feel the truth—and power—of that simple statement.
So consider being free here and now to snag happiness. Consider giving yourself permission. Reflect with real insight and honesty on all the why nots that will no doubt pop up. And practice. Practice.
Meanwhile, in tandem, by all means, keeeeeep walking your committed path toward everything you want most. Your capacity for happiness is its own superpower, bringing amazing energy to whatever you’re after.
Yin to yang and back again
And to be clear, in exploring our capacity for happiness, I don’t mean we’ll then have no pain. No sorrow. Instead, being happy without conditions also may mean accepting what is, while we move through it, altering what we can along the way. Bringing our best, including our best energy, to our individual work.
The journey is really the destination.
Because we know living brings with it the whole range of experiences and emotions, from light to dark and agony to ecstasy. From yin to yang and back again. In truth, my dears, that’s the gig.
But these days, in the midst of all that real life, consider that happiness may be ours for the taking. While the great pendulum of life swings as it will.
So, once again now, with feeling, consider what truly makes you happy. Then build whatever that is into your life, from the sweet inner space of your own capacity for happiness.
And get real support as you need it. After all, you deserve the life you want to live.