Are you happy?
I often hear people complaining that they’d be happy if so and so happens. If, for instance, their financial issues get resolved. Or their in-laws start treating them right. Of if they get their dream job. The “meant to be” spouse. The perfect vacation. The child they desperately want. The cure to an illness they’ve been battling with. So on and so forth. As if their happiness is dependent upon another event which is yet to happen, but when it does, they claim there’s no stopping to how happy they’d be. And then I’ve seen them getting married to their high school sweetheart. Getting their dream job. Getting cured. Getting financially stable. Getting the vacation they longed for. I’ve seen people have those events unfold before them which they considered to be hampering the happiness process. Yet, they still weren’t happy. They experienced joy, indeed, yes. Moments filled with laughter, love and joy. Temporary excitement and technically, short lived dosages of the happy hormones being released to their brains, which falsely painted a picture that suggested they had finally achieved happiness. But as soon as that rush dies off, another condition to their happiness appears. If…..
The fact is, happiness isn’t conditional. It’s not a bodily experience to begin with. Rather, it’s so incredibly spiritual that we only truly ever reach pure happiness, permanent, unconditional, independent happiness when we serve our soul. When we engage in experiences meant to make our soul smile, meant to feed it and quench it’s thirst. Meant to nurture and groom it and let it blossom. When we keep it protected and preserved from all that dampens its beauty. When we let go of resentments and grudges and negative associations holding our growth back. When we set out everyday to help and care for others, selflessly without expectation. When we serve the purpose of the existence of that soul, without which the universe will be incomplete, hollow where this soul was meant to exist and thrive.
Happiness isn’t a moment of short lived goodness. It’s not the positivity you feel when you eat your favourite ice cream flavour or the jump of joy that follows seeing your best friend. Happiness is beyond moments. It’s beyond physical beings. It’s beyond you and me. Happiness is for our soul, it’s when you sit on an empty stomach in a cold room, shivering, and yet thank God for the ray of sunshine coming through the window, waking you to a new day to spread happiness to others. So, ask yourself, are you happy?
– Hanna Seyal
