--Margaret Lee Runbeck

          Happiness is not a destination.  It is a journey, which depends far more on the way we live our lives than on the stage of life we happen to be in at any given time.  Happiness is to be found in the present, on a day to day basis, not at some distant point in the future. Too many of us think that we must reach a certain stage of life, or have a certain income level, in order to be truly happy.  But the sad truth is that, if we cannot find happiness in our current stage of life, we will probably never find it. We must learn to be happy in the present, because the present is all we have and all we will ever have.  

Perhaps our constant search for happiness is one of the primary reasons for our unhappiness.  It has been said that happiness is much like a butterfly.  As long as we chase after happiness, it will always be just beyond our reach.  But if we will sit quietly for a moment, perhaps it will come and perch on our shoulder.  Another reason for the unhappiness of some of us is that we expect to be happy all the time.  Happiness is a relative thing, and we wouldn't know when we were happy if we didn't have periods of unhappiness with which to make comparisons. Nobody is happy all the time.  We all have our share of problems and crises in life, and it is very hard for any of us to be happy when we have just lost a loved one or suffered some other severe loss.  Yet, all of us must face such grief from time to time.  It is how we live our lives between crises that determines whether or not we find happiness. 

To a large extent, happiness is a way of thinking and a habit that we can cultivate.  Whether we focus our attention on the reasons we have to be happy, or the reasons we have to be unhappy, is largely a matter of choice.  Some people, who have very little in the way of material things, and who have more than their fair share of troubles, seem to achieve some degree of happiness throughout most of their lives while others, who seem to have many reasons to be happy, go through life with happiness always just beyond their grasp.  Perhaps Abraham Lincoln was right when he said, "A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be."  Maybe happiness does depend more on the way we live our lives than on anything else. 

Copyright 2014 Allen W. Smith

NOTE: Comments are welcome and encouraged.

TB-79—Posted 06/14/2014