Are you happy?

Happiness. The thing most of us strive to achieve. I often wonder if the people around me are happy.
Not in the "I'm pretty content" kind of way, but truly happy.

I have friends who've battled depression, and even though I don't always speak to them, I often find myself thinking about them, wondering if they've found happiness now. I also often think about the people I'm not friends with anymore. Ex-lovers, ex-friends, people I've lost contact with, and bridges I've burnt.
Just because you're not in my life doesn't mean you're not in my heart.

Especially at night, I think of the people who used to be in my life but isn't anymore for some reason, and I hope with all my might that they're happy. I even think about the people who've been mean to me over the years, and I hope they feel better. Clearly, they were taking their misery and insecurities out on me, and I hope those problems have gone away for them so they can be happy, and in turn, make others happy.

I will never be able to understand those who don't wish happiness on others. Those who, instead of giving another person a chance to change, chooses to be mean or belittle them. Those who react to situations with wanting revenge on the other person for making them feel bad.
An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind, you know.


Most of all, I think of the people whose lives I made worse by being in it, and I hope they're happier now. I hope they got rid of whatever issues I caused them, and I often think about those people and how I wish I'd treated them better when I had the chance. That I'd understood them instead of being annoyed, that I'd built them up instead of tearing them down, and that I'd helped them instead of abandoning them.


Am I happy? I don't know. As a buddhist, I don't really believe pursuiting happiness too much will lead to anything else than the inability to appreciate what you have. After all, if all you want is more, nothing will ever be enough. I'm content feeling content.

I could be happier, but I could also feel a lot worse, and I have, so... I'm good. I'm doing what I can to take care of myself and be happy, and I'm constantly learning and trying to make others happy as well.

I find there's a fine balance to be found, something I'm still not that good at. On one hand, I want to make people around me happy, but on the other hand, it's sometimes at the expense of my own happiness, and I have yet to learn fully where to draw the line.


And it's okay, by the way, not to be happy. Sometimes happiness does require an effort, and sometimes, you just don't have the energy to go for it, and that's okay too.
I just hope that all the people who either are or have been in my life will find happiness sooner or later.

Nobody says you have to be bubbly, hyper-happy all the time, either, by the way.
When I say happy, I don't mean "I'm so happy I could scream and shout and omg I'm so hyper" either. I mean the kind of happy where you just sit quietly and smile at what you have in life. The kind of happy where being alive doesn't hurt more than it has to.

So, think about it. Are you happy? Truly?
If not, is there anything you can do to be happier?

And this is where some people go wrong. I've seen people throughout my life being so desperate for happiness that they think the best way to obtain it is to constantly look for faults and things that are holding them back, and then getting rid of those things.
Sure, that's one way to go about it, and some things WILL hold you back if you don't get rid of them, but if you spend your whole life looking for faults, in the end, that's all you'll see. And if all you can see in the world is flaws, that's not a very happy state of being, now is it?

I think the key to happiness is the opposite: learning to look for the good in everything that surrounds us, and finding something to be happy with in almost every situation.


If you've read this far and still manage to make sense of what I've written, I thank and congratulate you.
I hope you're happy. If you've read this, you're on my friendslist, and if you're on my list, even if you aren't, for that matter, I care about you, and I truly hope you're happy. Know that.