There’s this underlying notion about happy people that I’ve recently become aware of. Somewhere, this misconception came about that a truly happy person is someone who is always smiling, always positive and never, ever sad, but this is just untrue. The whole point of this article can be summed up by one straightforward phrase that happens to be a lyric from one of my favorite songs, “Who You Are” by Jessie J: “It’s okay not to be okay.”
I think it’s fair to say that if there was one thing every person in the world universally desired, that would be happiness. We may try to achieve happiness in different ways, i.e., through religion, love, money, fame, etc., but regardless, the end goal is always the same: happiness. It is unfair, though, to assume a happy person is always happy. In fact, by believing this, you’re selling yourself short because you will never be satisfied if that is your definition of happiness. Simply put, being 100% happy, 100% of the time is a goal that is unattainable.
I may not be a very philosophical person, and I’m no life expert, but I do believe life is a series of balancing acts. It’s like the idiom “too much of a good thing” says: You can’t truly appreciate the good in life without experiencing the bad. It goes the same way when it comes to happiness. Without sadness, we would never know how it feels to be happy; we’d have nothing to compare it to.
It’s important to keep in mind that a bad day in no way means it’s a bad life. It’s okay to have crappy days. It’s healthy. We deserve bad days just like we deserve the good. If you feel like curling up into a ball and staying in bed all day with no human interaction, that’s perfectly fine. It seems as though sometimes there’s this pressure from society be happy all the time because we go on social media, we see people smiling, we see them enjoying time with friends, we see them on vacation, but what we don’t see are the days spent crying eating ice cream for no good reason, because who would share that? I’m not implying we should be making our dark days public. Spreading positivity and happiness should always be our number one priority, but it’s good to keep in mind that bad days do happen, and they happen to everyone. It’s equally important to remember that tomorrow, the sun will rise, and you get the chance to start anew.
