In Search Of True Happiness

True happiness – that lasting, and sincere, and genuine happiness – what is it really? How does it feel? How do you know it’s real? Is it that feeling you get when you find a $20 bill in an old wallet you haven’t used before? Or accomplishing a goal you’ve had? Feelings of satisfaction, joy, excitement, content, positivity, and good vibes, they can all be categorized as happiness, but true happiness, the kind that lasts and stays, how do you find it and where does it come from?

We can find happiness in every corner of our lives. It can be found in the simple pleasures of everyday life, like having the temperature of the water in the shower being perfect when you get into the extraordinary once-in-a lifetime moments like winning big money in the lottery, but those feelings and moments are all just temporary. They come and they go, but never stick around forever.

No matter how amazing or how satisfying a something is, it’s not forever. That feeling of elation and euphoria eventually fades and the bright lights of a moment will eventually dim. The extraordinary eventually becomes ordinary and what was once shiny eventually grows dull. No matter how happy you can be today, or this month, or even this year, that can change and that can end. Happiness, as something that you have and something you can gain, can eventually expire.

So if happiness can end, does true happiness really exist? I’d like to believe so.

Maybe becoming truly happy and finding true happiness involves changing your perception by living with positivity and having hope. To become truly happy, you need to have a dose of optimism, a dash of idealism, but maintain realistic expectations. We need to have faith that happiness can always be found when its lost, hope that it’ll come back into our lives again, but know that it won’t always be perfect or instant. Although being happy and having happiness doesn’t last forever, it doesn’t mean that it can’t come back and we can’t feel those feelings again.

Instead of looking at happiness as something that we have or feel, maybe we need to think of it as a way of life and something that we exude. Maybe it’s not something we get, but something we give off and show. Instead of looking for it on the outside, maybe we have to build it with ourselves on the inside.

Being happy is a feeling that we have and can be given, but being truly happy is way that we choose to live.