A few weeks ago I posted something about "happiness" on Instagram. Some probably took it as a never satisfied type of approach, which is ok. Others probably didn't know where I was coming from. For those of you that missed it, here it is:
"It is assumed that our status is binary. We are happy, whole, complete; or we're miserable, unfortunate creatures. There's no spectrum. We are told that the journey leads to a happy one. We talk about happiness as if it were an end goal. A state of permanence. Feeling anxious or angry is something we shouldn't feel, or should feel guilty of feeling. It's irrelevant. Powerlifting doesn't bring me happiness. I'm frustrated and hurting the majority of the time. I do it because it's challenging, it's interesting and it gives me purpose. I find meaning in putting my body through hell.
We fail so we can succeed. We hurt so we can heal. We are lost so we can find ourselves again. Stay busy. Stay interested. Find meaning. Be perfectly unhappy. It's ok."
This is not to tell you that you can't 'feel' happy or joyous. It is just impossible to stay at that level. And if you say that you feel happy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, then you're full of shit.
We tend to avoid our feelings the majority of the time. We avoid facing them because we are too busy stressing over being stressed about 'why am I not happy'. Then we immediately move on to the next thing to see if we will "find" happiness there. We find outlets or shortcuts to that destination that doesn't really exist. We are caught up in ideas of how it should look like. That notion about happiness entraps us. It steers us away from looking at the bigger picture. If we faced how we truly felt, danced with it, come to terms with it, then you would realize that happiness doesn't come in any particular form.
So stop failing to see that what you are looking for is right in front of you. The opportunity is not out in the world, it is within you.
Again, we fail so we can succeed. We hurt so we can heal. We are lost so we can find ourselves again. Stay busy. Stay interested. Find meaning. Be perfectly unhappy. It's ok.