You Will Find Happiness In The End

By

I read something once that said happiness is about stringing together those little moments of joy, rather than having everything in your life fit together perfectly. I don’t really know what happiness is, but I’m finding out more each day.

Happiness is what gets you out of bed in the morning, makes you drink more alcohol than is healthy for your liver, and urges you to meet that girl on OKCupid, even though the last time you met someone you accidentally told them you were a stripper because you had to fill the awkward silence with something. I am not actually a stripper.

Maybe happiness is the final state of mental accomplishment, the ultimate motivator. Every person at every stage in their life is working towards finding it or finding out how to find it. Maybe happiness is about trying, about taking risks and going for your dreams. Maybe you are only likely to find it if you never give up.

Maybe happiness is something we are always chasing. Maybe it’s something we can never catch, but we will always have as the end goal. In this way, it’s what keeps us running, even after our bodies are exhausted and our minds have given up the race. Maybe it’s actually the chase that keeps us happy while we try to find whatever it is we are trying to catch.

But maybe a never-ending chase after something we don’t have isn’t a good idea. If we’re always trying to get something we haven’t got yet, I don’t see how we can ever be happy. Always wanting more is a surefire way to improve ourselves, but it’s also a surefire way to never be happy with what we have. Maybe sometimes we need to stop chasing and just stretch our muscles.

A few weeks ago, my roommate had some friends over. We drank spiked tea and lay around our apartment under a veil of alcohol and laughter. We lit candles, drank more tea, and dissolved into a daze of feeling and sound. Maybe happiness was about forgetting to find happiness and just living life. Maybe sometimes we just have to appreciate what we have in the present. Our friend took out a guitar and began to play, her soft voice echoing throughout the otherwise silent apartment. I smiled, closed my eyes, and realized that in this moment, all I needed was this.