I had no idea what happiness was. I thought I was illuminated, I thought maybe I knew something about anything. That happiness came to you and stayed like a chronic virtue. I had no idea that happiness was a choice.

I had no idea what love was. I thought it was offering whatever capabilities I have to another person. I thought it was giving. I thought maybe it was – no, I didn’t know what I thought it was. How can you know what it is before you experience it? Really, what it really is. Oh, I had no idea.

Neither of these two things are described in words. They’re the strings drawing your lips into a smile you never intended to have. They’re the warm hand finding yours beneath the sleeve of your coat when you’re cold. It’s subtle and simple and if you’re not paying enough attention, you could miss them. I think that’s probably why so many people miss out on happiness, or love. We move so quickly that there’s no time between our thoughts, feelings, and hearts so we miss the cues that we could, at any point, choose to pay attention to. They fade, and the moments we could have cherished are gone. I thought happiness was something you found outside – but it’s inside.

I thought love was giving half of yourself to someone, measured. Moving so quickly you either miscounted how much you gave, or forgetting to give at all. It seemed so hard, you know? It was always work, maybe it was always giving. I don’t know what I thought it was. Something possibly dark and inexplicable; but I have been wrong.

Happiness doesn’t fall from the sky like rain where you can fill your bucket with clear and pure water. There are long hours you need to spend with yourself, discovering the paths that inwardly make you who you are. Slowly, you’ll begin to see that happiness is a choice. We process our emotions without realizing we have a semblance of control over them and when we see that there is a choice to an extent, sometimes we forget to choose it. But to be happy, really, is a choice.

I’m beginning to understand that love too, is a choice. So much of what we think about love might be true, or it might be inapplicable to many situations. People think they’re too broken for love; that it is too far out of reach. Lasting love, the kind that roots in your soul. The kind where their calcium strengthens your backbone. The kind where you start to see the rest of the universe in their eyes. I don’t even believe that the expanse of the universe is fathomable, but I still sigh and smile every time I look in his eyes because the expanse? It’s there. When I trip over my own feet his hand is there, ensuring I don’t fall. I thought I knew what love was. It turns out it is so much more, because I’ve recognized that it’s a choice, too.

Every night when I fall asleep, I quickly think of the morning and how it’ll feel like to fall in love all over again. I want to make that choice every morning. When asked about how things are the way they are for me, I only have one thing to say.

“Because we want it to be this way.”

Choose to be happy. Choose love. The feeling of being alive will wash over you and you’ll wonder how you’ll ever be the same.