From childhood, we are bombarded with metaphors, depictions, and illustrations of what happiness is and the ingredients needed to get us there; and furthermore the entitled proposition that life at its core revolves around or includes somehow that very delineation of happiness. 

 

The definition of the word happiness struck me as I gnawed on the concept of it. Contentment, pleasure, gladness, cheerfulness, bliss, exhilaration, delight, joy…

 

Have I fallen so very far off the grid of balance that I no longer subscribe to the proposal that as much as I would enjoy to frolic by the pool of our cultures mainstream version of happiness… I believe it is not a necessity nor legitimate ingredient to live an inspired life.

 

Is it ludicrous thinking that perhaps the ideology of happiness itself becomes such a driver towards lavish; vacant ritual which pushes me out to the farthest outskirts of trueness that I would do better to abandon the pursuit of it altogether?

 

The superimposed imageries of smiling happy people with unflawed lives, plastic bodies, logical storylines read like overdone scripts and I have grown exhausted with the agonizingly predictable re-runs and plots. 

 

What if…I simply allow my life to intersect with my soul; moment by complex, random moment.  What if I make peace with its capricious, volatile, ever evolving existing without contrition?

 

What if…I allow the places where I fail, fall short, that pain me most; Instead of distancing myself or running from them towards the mirages , I turn and  welcome  these spaces with the countenance of peace and allow them in… to teach me about myself,  the people on this journey with me,  and what I am made of. 

 

 Unlike the collections of so much else I have spent my lifetime using as the metrics for my own happiness, this… making peace; integrating with the broken pieces of my life and soul; learning to listen to my life, irregardless of place, players, haves, have nots, losses, gains, beauty, suffering, knowings… infuses my heart with a deep sense of contentment, pleasure, gladness, cheerfulness, bliss, exhilaration, delight, joy…happiness.