Blogspiration #10 – Happiness
So, this week I’ve actually got a non-book, non-film quote for you all. But it’s on a subject that I hold dear to my heart; happiness. I remembering hearing this quote and it just stuck in my mind and I always come back to it whenever I’m having a bad day and it makes me remember that it’s okay to not always be happy.
We’re always thinking that someday we’ll be happy; we’ll get that car or that job or that person in our lives that’ll fix everything. But happiness is a mood, and it’s a condition, not a destination. It’s like being tired or hungry, it’s not permanent. It comes and goes, and that’s okay. And I feel like if people thought of it that way, they’d find happiness a lot more often.
– Julian Baker, One Tree Hill
I love this quote. Like, hand on heart, head on pillow, love this. It’s just so perfect and I honestly could not agree more. Every aims for happiness, they aim to reach it’s destination by doing the things they think will equal it. Surrounding themselves with friends, buying things, getting a job, reading, watching movies and while these things are all good and they can indeed, make us happy, and that is brilliant and it is, as humans, what we need, but it isn’t the end all of everything. It’s overrated.
By this, I mean, that it’s okay to feel sad or angry or depressed or alone because without these feelings, without the negative ones, we’d never appreciate the positive ones like being in love, feeling happy and safe and secure. We can never know happiness until we’ve known pain. Kids understand this more than anyone. They can feel happy, scrape their knee, cry and then get up and carry on. They know that it’s okay to cry, that it’s okay to be sad for a little bit because in a while it’ll be over and they can get on with their lives.
I feel this can be said of everyone. We may feel sad at times, we may feel like the world is weighing us down and holding us back and that we’ll never feel happy again but it’s the knowledge that, at the end of the day, happiness will come and it may be fleeting but it will be there that makes everything okay. Things will never be perfect and trying to get to this point will only lead to sadness. Happiness may not be a destination, but it will be impossible to be happy if the journey we’re on is surrounded by what we feel is failure.
In the end all, I feel that this quote means that it’s okay to be sad at times, it’s okay to let the world get us down because we are only human. But I also feel that it’s trying to say that to help us be okay with ourselves is to be free. To let the world go on around us without trying to overthink and overanalyse things, but to just be.
Or something like that anyway.
What do you think? Do you agree that happiness isn’t a destination but a mood? Do you agree with me? Or do you have something else in mind? :)
7 Comments
Nikki
I’m a pretty content, optimistic sort of person so I like to think of happiness as my default position – the way I feel so long as nothing is actively going wrong :)
Melissa
I agree that happiness is a mood, it comes and goes. While life isn’t always happy, it’s these happy moments that make us realize that there is good in the world, and that we should cherish these moments and the life that we have. I also think that there are things that you can do, like choosing not to be negative about a situation that others are being negative about that can improve your level of happiness. Of course no one would be able to be happy all the time, but I think that it’s something that people can make conscious efforts to change for themselves.
Brodie
You know what makes me happy? The knowledge that I am surrounded by the most amazing, smart, talened, adorkable, thoughtful book bloggers in all the effing universe. I am screaming a big, heaving YES to your post! THIS THIS THIS. EXACTLY THIS. It’s okay to feel. To be
Too often it feels like we chase happiness in material objects – we can’t be happy if we don’t have this, or we haven’t paid off that, etc. But then what happens when you finally get that car? That promotion at work? There’ll be another level to strive toward, another goal that you must reach so you can finally be HAPPY. But if we just BE, like you said, live in the moment and allow ourselves to feel all the crazy emotions that make life so beautiful and chaotic, I think we’ll find ourselves feeling much happier, much more at peace, even admist the tears. I love that you say kids understand it more than anyone. It’s SO true. But it gets conditioned out of us as we grow up, all these expectations and taboo’s drilled into us. We all need to tap into our inner 5 year old again.
Also: I’m not sure I mention this enough (but I think it 7 times a day)… I LOVE YOU <3
alexandrasscribblings
Oh Faye, yes, yes, yes to everything that you said!
“it’s okay to feel sad or angry or depressed or alone because without these feelings, without the negative ones, we’d never appreciate the positive ones like being in love, feeling happy and safe and secure”
EXACTLY. It is SO OK not to be happy sometimes. I mean, yeah, suffering sucks, and you’ll never hear me arguing otherwise but… I know that at least for myself, it’s the hard times in life that have really shaped me and prompted me to decide who exactly I want to be and grown me as a person and as a friend/daughter/sister/etc. And, like you point out, that have made me really appreciate the positive – and the myriad of blessings that I do have. And from where I’m standing now – and admittedly, I’m lucky enough to have never suffered a really, really major trauma yet – I wouldn’t choose to change anything, because this is who I am now.
Maybe that’s why so many people look back at their childhoods with rose-coloured spectacles – maybe what they’re really remembering so fondly isn’t being a kid, in and of itself, but when they knew how to be happy.
Andrea Teagan
This is a great post!
I really think happiness comes from within. It comes from allowing yourself to be happy, even when things arent perfect. Because lets face it, things will never be perfect. Why waste our time being unhappy, life is too short. :)
Andrea
Kristin Feliz
WOW. That’s so true. And I didn’t think it to be true until someone articulated that for me.
Such a GREAT blogspiration post! I need to save this or write this on my wall or something!!
Sarah (saz101)
Faye, I’m so sorry, I read this earlier in the week, and I thought I commented! I can’t even explain how overwhelmingly amazing this is… like, makes me cry amazing.
What Brodie said: “You know what makes me happy? The knowledge that I am surrounded by the most amazing, smart, talened, adorkable, thoughtful book bloggers in all the effing universe. I am screaming a big, heaving YES to your post! THIS THIS THIS. EXACTLY THIS. It’s okay to feel. To be”
I can’t put it ANY better than this. I just can’t even explain &hearts you!