Tuesday mornings are always the same. Wake up 30 minutes before class, grab a water without waking up my roommate and head to my Comparative Religions class. My professor is a pretty cool guy. He’s educated in ways beyond the books and tests we take. It just so happened that one morning he asked a relatively simple question: What is the one thing that we all search for? Everyone was quick to answer with the word ‘happiness.’ I wasn’t surprised that every single person in the room responded this way. I mean isn’t it what we all long for? A life full of happiness and satisfaction?
I’m by no means a miserable, unhappy person. I enjoy every day and I live my life like I could die tomorrow. But, I gave up on searching for happiness a while ago. I was constantly trying to find happiness in every single thing I could and by doing this I took a lot for granted. Nothing was ever good enough and I wouldn’t accept something if it didn’t meet my standards or give me instant gratification. As a result, this made me incredibly unhappy. I was never satisfied.
You see, people are happy when they are satisfied, when they get what they want. They fail to realize that you cannot always get what you want. They don’t always see that the amount of happiness in their lives is controlled by them. Not everything in life is ideal. We don’t always get to pick how our days are going to go or what the outcome is going to be, but what we can control is how we react to the end result. We make choices that affect our overall happiness everyday. We have the ability to pick whether or not we end each day with a smile on our faces.
If you open yourself up and give yourself the ability to see things from a different perspective your life will change. I have accepted that things cannot always go my way. Even though that is upsetting, in the grand scheme of things that moment of anger is irrelevant. Every second you spend unhappy with your life is a precious moment you could’ve spent being happy with yourself and others. I know sometimes life isn’t always fair and it isn’t always easy. You want happiness so badly that you’ll go to any extent to have it. But take a second to look around and notice the little things you usually overlook. Really appreciate the next meal you eat and hug the people you love. Everything you think doesn’t matter contributes to your happiness in some way.
When I stopped being angry over things that I couldn’t change and started appreciating the things I used to take for granted my life spun 180 degrees. I’m a better me and I’m happy because I’m able to understand that satisfaction is not always achievable. I gave life a chance to allow me to be happy with what I have in front of me right now. With every day that approaches I know that I am the only one who gets to say how my life is going to be. I stopped searching for happiness, I chose it instead. I was looking for something that was right infront of me all along. Choose happiness and happiness will choose you.